


The Way We Are

by Deejaymil



Series: The Always Continuing Adventures of Blackbird and Fiver [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Best Friends, Canon Elements, Childhood Sweethearts, Coming of Age, Eventual Romance, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up Together, Slow Burn, Teenage Em and Spence are unmitigated disasters, Teenagers, i mean really slow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-06-14 19:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 102,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15395637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: A plane flew through this night in September 1981 with two inquisitive passengers aboard on their way to a new life together: Emily introducing herself to anyone who seemed inclined to speak and Spencer shyly trying to avoid eye-contact with the air hostess who kept ruffling his hair and calling him 'precious.' They knew that everything was different now. After all, they'd be thirteen soon which was far older than seven and practically almost grown up, and London, followed by Rome, was very far from home.But no matter how different life became, or how far they travelled, they always knew one thing: they were determined to keep each other.





	1. Just Spencer and Raptor Emily

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blythechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/gifts).



> Continuing where the last story left off so, same as there, Spence is aged up to be the same age as Emily here, just for simplicity's sake.
> 
> This fic is a gift to the ever-wonderful Blythechild, because she loves lonely souls finding each other and she loves Em/Spence, and that guarantees she's going to like at least two aspects of this story ;)
> 
> Updates will be three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

A plane flew through this night in September 1981, carrying aboard it so many intersecting lives and bodies all within the same liminal space, at least for now. Few paid much attention to the others, except for two inquisitive passengers exploring the business class section, Emily introducing herself to anyone who seemed inclined to speak to her and Spencer shyly trying to avoid eye-contact with the air hostess who kept ruffling his hair and calling him “precious.”

Emily’s extraversion had, by the time the novelty of flying through the air began to wear down, earned her several pieces of candy from friendly passengers, one paperback book, several compliments about the doll she had under her arm, and a small drawing of a flower one man had been doodling on his napkins. Spencer’s introversion had earned him an extra-large serving of ice cream for lunch, the hostess taking pity on the shy, stammering boy in row D. Elizabeth kept one eye on the children, gratified to find that, thus far, having two children really wasn’t that much extra work than having one, working busily in the space allotted to her. When she looked up again, almost an hour later, it was to find both children crammed onto the singular plane seat, both noses pressed to the window as they silently watched the ocean below.

“What’s London like?” she heard Spencer asking Emily, his voice thin and worried. Behind them, on the seat that was supposed to be Spencer’s, there was a jumble of books with three toys perched atop the blankets they’d been given: two dolls propped together with the white hare toy between them.

“I don’t really remember,” was Emily’s response. “I haven’t been there in ages, not since I was six.”

“You went last year, didn’t you?”

“No, I went to France, that’s not _London_. Grandpa lives there, in a cabin with dogs. You’d like them, I think. Maybe you’ll get to come this year? You can take a _ferry_ , it’s brilliant. No one stops you from throwing things off the boat, and there are cars on it too and once there was a horse that tried to bite me.”

Spencer was quiet, Elizabeth’s pen tapping on her paper as she tried to refocus on the diplomatic mission she was detailing, her brain for some reason more interested in what the two soft voices beside her were now discussing, some part of her still back in the States watching a plane take her son away.

Not noticing her friend’s silence, Emily kept chattering cheerfully: “And we can go exploring around London too, I bet Mom will pay someone to take us to see things if I ask really nice. I don’t bother usually because a lot of it is buildings and old statues and boring things, but you like boring things so that could be cool. Besides, we live there now, so there’s all the time in the world to find cool things to do, right?”

Spencer didn’t answer, just slipped down into his seat and picked up the hare toy, holding it in his lap and staring at it. Elizabeth found herself watching him, the feeling she had like she’d left something dear behind cementing itself in the expression on his face.

“Emily, sit down,” she ordered, wincing as Emily flopped back into the same seat as Spencer, wedging them both in uncomfortably. “In your own seat, please. And be quiet—people are trying to work and don’t need your endless chattering.”

“Fine, but I’m not going to sleep,” Emily declared, crawling into Spencer’s seat and sending books and blankets slithering everywhere. “I _refuse_. I’m far too excited to sleep.”

Despite this declaration, when Elizabeth next looked over there, the hostess was reaching over two curled up little shapes, pulling the shade down over the window to cut off the light on their closed eyes. One blanket between the two of them and their dolls seated amongst them, Elizabeth looked at them and wondered, for the thousandth time, if she was doing right by them.

“They’re wonderful,” said the hostess, stepping back from the children and smiling at Elizabeth, who glanced at her, confused. “Your children. I’ve never seen two siblings so happy to be together for an entire flight—normally the bickering begins before we’ve even turned the seatbelt light off.”

Elizabeth nodded, forcing a smile and not correcting the woman. “They’re very well behaved,” she commented, returning to her work and hoping that—mostly with Emily—continued.

The children slept through, until the touch of the wheels on the tarmac in England announced the beginning of the next part of their lives.

 

Everything was different now.

Right from the beginning—the drive from the airport through London—everything was strange. Spencer stared out the tinted windows of the chaffered car they’d been picked up in by a man in a uniform that was nicer than _any_ their occasional driver at home had worn. He saw grey buildings and red busses and squat cars in a myriad of pastels; the people were almost as varied as at home in Vegas too, except in all the ways they were different. The clothes were strange to his eyes, the skies overhead cloudy and just as grey as the buildings. Emily giggled and pointed out a man in a strange, multi-coloured jacket and leather pants, declaring that one day she’d own pants just like it—Elizabeth shuddering at the thought. And the _roundabouts_. Emily thought they were exciting, demanding to go around over and over again when she realised just how big they could be—Elizabeth ignored her, paperwork on her knee and no time for them.

“Look at that _bus_ ,” Emily chattered, pointing to the bus before her attention was snapped away by a group of teenagers with hair like the birds Spencer had seen on TV once, spiked and coloured with more earrings in their faces than their ears. Spencer blinked, started. Emily made a noise of _awe_ , her eyes going big. “Look at their _hair.”_

“Disgraceful,” Elizabeth said after a glance at the youths.

“Kickass,” Emily whispered into the glass, softly so her mom couldn’t hear her swear. Spencer just folded his hands on his lap, too unsure of his surroundings to touch anything, and felt sick. And he kept feeling sick and out of sorts, until Emily yelled, “A dragon!” and launched him up against the window with her, hare toy still in hand. In the centre of the road they were circling on yet another curved road was a statue—a horse and a man and a dragon below them. Spencer stared, daunted. “Are they killing it?”

“I think so,” he responded, fighting her a little for a better view of the statue before they drove out of sight of it.

“Saint George and the dragon,” Elizabeth answered absently. “We’re almost home.” Even she seemed tense now, her eyes on the dragon as they passed.

“Why is there a dragon statue?” Emily asked. “Did George actually kill a dragon?”

“Do you even pay attention in theology, Emily? Honestly, I don’t know why I bother with you sometimes.” As Elizabeth scolded Emily about not knowing the answer to her own question, Spencer suddenly not as interested in the dragon statue anymore as he considered that London was also a place where you could get in trouble for not knowing something, instead of just being told the answer…

And that wasn’t like home at all.

And then they were out of the grey of London proper and driving along quiet roadways lined by mansions. Thoroughly reprimanded, her excitement pushed down by her mother’s irritation, Emily pressed close to Spencer and whispered, “Whoa…” at the sight of the homes they were driving past.

“Have you ever lived in houses like those?” Spencer asked, trying to count the windows as they passed and failing completely. They made the big house at home look tiny in comparison.

“No,” Emily admitted. “I’ve been in them though. They echo.”

Neither spoke after that, because the car was pulling into a long, tree-lined drive lined with trees and hedges, past a wrought-iron fence, past a great sign naming the place ‘Winfield House’, and out into endless lawn leading to a building just as startlingly grand.

“Mom, whoa,” Emily said, her voice stunned. “Do we live here now? Who are _they?_ ”

“Welcome to the most expensive ambassadorial home in the world,” Elizabeth said quietly, finally looking at them. “Understand this, both of you. We are the temporary caretakers of this home and it is an _honour_ and a great responsibility to be so. I won’t have any of the games you played at home here—no damaging the gardens, no running through the home or making a mess. Unlike Seattle, this building comes with a full compliment of staff and is a working building—there are private wings which are ours alone, but the majority of the house belongs to the appointment. At every moment we are here, we represent the unity of our country and the one which we are in—understand?”

Spencer didn’t. Emily, however, did. She wilted.

“Yes, Mom,” she said. She understood perfectly: for the next three years, they would exist—not live—in this mansion, surrounded by people there to do a job. And here were those people now; as they drew up outside the vaunted front doors, there was a small assembly in two straight lines to meet them.

Dazed, the children climbed from the car to be introduced to the people before them. Steward, housekeeper, _head_ gardener—for a wild moment, Emily imagined that that meant he was quite literally the head of their garden, come to life, but he didn’t look very woody—head of security, and the people _behind_ them, who didn’t get introduced so Emily guessed, quite correctly, that only the heads of this place got to have names. That was a familiar feeling, knowing what it was like to be lined up just to look pretty and not have a name. In sympathy, she poked her tongue out at a younger lady in a very pretty apron, who looked startled for just a second.

“We’ll have someone bring your belongings inside,” one of the men was saying. Neither Emily nor Spencer could remember what he was head of. “Security needs to be our first discussion, Madam Ambassador, in times like these—”

Elizabeth had glanced down at the children, standing there awkwardly looking up at her. Neither knew what to do.

“We’ll take the children to their rooms,” another woman said, another head of something or other. Emily thought that this place had too many heads for comfort, like a monster who grew two every time you chopped off one. Spencer just wanted to go home. “Come along, both of you. Leave your bags—Wilds will get them.”

They were led inside, into an opening hall as grand as the outside had been, and with the sinking realisation that this was it. The chandelier overhead, the marble inlays in the walls, the sea of unfamiliar faces…

This was ‘home’.

 

There was a girl in Spencer’s room. He hovered in the doorway after an abortive attempt to find Emily, clinging to the frame and peering in at this stranger. He might have stayed there forever, cold and miserable and wanting his books, if she hadn’t opened his suitcase and began to touch his stuff.

“Oh!” he gasped, launching in and skidding to a stop when she jumped. “I mean, please… don’t. Please don’t? I don’t… that’s my stuff.”

The girl—maybe just a bit older than Ethan? She looked it anyway—curtsied, looking annoyed for a moment with him. “I know,” she said, looking oddly at him. “It’s my job, Master Reid.”

He blinked.

Blinked again.

“Master Reid?” he squeaked, seeing her tense a little like she wasn’t really sure how to act around him.

“Oh, my apologies. Mr Chambers hasn’t told us how Madam Ambassador would like us to address you yet.” As though this explained things, she smiled at him. He stared back, sure that he was drowning under all these new things. “Do you have a preference?”

“For my name?” he squeaked. “Uh. Just Spencer?”

There it was again—her mouth definitely twitched. “How about Master Spencer?” she tried, clearly trying to hint at something. He didn’t know what. _He_ wasn’t a master of anything, not the last time he’d checked.

“Just Spencer,” he said again, more firmly.

The door bounced as Emily skidded in. “It took forever to find you,” she announced. “This place is _huge_. Do we get to pick our names?”

“Oh, no I was just—” the girl stammered out, her hands still resting on Spencer’s suitcase.

“I want to be called _Admiral_ Emily,” said Emily.

Spencer stared at her.

“I don’t…” The girl was definitely struggling not to laugh now. “I think maybe your mother…”

“No?” Emily looked disappointed. “Well, I guess there are rules about that. Can I be Doctor Emily? No? Hmm. How about _Raptor_ Emily?” She glanced at Spencer, now grinning hugely, knowing exactly what she was doing; Emily, ever since he’d known her, had delighted in torturing the staff. “I doubt there are rules against letting me be _Raptor_ Emily. And then he can be Just Spencer, and we can unpack our own bags, thanks. You’re welcome, bye.”

There was a blink of a moment where the girl hovered just a little bit longer, thrown by the sudden dismissal, but Emily flapped her hand at the door and then shut it firmly behind her. Rudely, Spencer thought, frowning at her.

“Yeah that was rude, I’ll apologise later when Mom screams at me for it,” Emily said fast, launching over to his window and leaning out. “Have you seen? We’ve got _guards_. And eagle statues! And our bathrooms—one each, mind—they’re made of rock. It’s so cold, but brilliant for sliding in, that’s going to be a blast—and want to know what’s even better?”

“What?” asked Spencer. Over to his suitcase he’d slunk, feeling like he wanted to sleep but not in this huge room with nothing of his and the furniture so heavy and oaken he thought he might be crushed by it.

“Mom’s bedroom is _so_ far away. Actually, everything is really far away here. We’re going to need to ride our bikes just to get to breakfast.”

Spencer smoothed out a shirt the girl had touched, hands moving feverishly until he was sure it was _exactly_ how his mom had packed it for him. “Our bikes are home,” he said quietly, Emily falling silent as she realised what he’d said. “By the time we get them back, we’ll be too big for them…”

“We’ll just have to get new bikes.”

“They won’t be the same and you know it…”

Emily had been fighting the beginning touches of worry that were building, noting everything that wasn’t quite as good as she’d hoped it would be about their new home. The staff were stiffer than any staff she’d ever had before, the house was bigger and emptier, her mom looked like she’d be even busier and more important than she’d ever been… and Spencer looked miserable.

She didn’t want him to be miserable. “Want to play chess?” she was about to ask, but there was a knock at the door, a man letting himself in and nodding his head at them. They were summoned to Elizabeth’s new suite of offices, where they spent the next three hours being lectured by Elizabeth and two other scary men in suits and with _guns_ on security and everything they were No Longer Allowed to Do.

London, Spencer and Emily both realised, wasn’t going to be anything at all like home.

 

Dinner was silent and strange, the food just ever so slightly _off_ to Spencer’s tastes. He ate three bites and wanted to be sick, putting his fork down and shaking his head when Elizabeth asked him if he was feeling okay. No. No, he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t, and this was a _mistake_. He hadn’t even been here a day and he hated it, he hated being _Master_ Spencer, as Elizabeth had informed him the staff would call him, and he hated that Emily was _Miss_ Emily and he hated this mansion and the clouds outside and the stars he didn’t know and the birds he didn’t know either and—

A tear tapped his plate, dripping into the food he didn’t like either.

He wondered if his mom missed him as much as he missed her. If he’d been home and this miserable, he could go to her, he could climb into bed with her, warm and loved and safe and happy and… loved.

He didn’t feel loved, not even a little. Even Emily was a bit a stranger here, with the way she knew things he didn’t and didn’t seem upset at all that things weren’t quite the same.

“May I go to bed please?” he managed, wincing at Elizabeth’s curt, “Yes. Goodnight.”

Elizabeth hadn’t meant for it to sound as sharp as it had, her heart sinking as he slipped from the table and vanished out the door at speed, leaving Emily sitting there alone with her own fork lowered. It had caught her by surprise, his sudden tears. He’d seemed fine until that moment—hadn’t he?

Jet-lag, she supposed. A good night’s sleep and he’d be fine.

“May I—” Emily began, but Elizabeth frowned at her.

“You’re to leave him alone tonight,” she told her daughter firmly. “He needs to rest—today has been a big day for him. When you leave this table, go straight to bed. If I hear one whisper of you sneaking around, you’ll be sorry for it.”

Emily slouched. Nothing was ever going to change, especially not her mom.

But she hoped that Spencer was okay…

 

The bed was cold and empty and impossibly huge. Spencer felt lost in it, like he could crawl around in endless circles and never find an edge. It was _ridiculously_ big, considering how small he was. If he laid flat across it, he couldn’t reach from one side to the other. And there were too many pillows, the lacey edging on the duvet making his nose itch when he tried to snuggle under it, and even the _bed_ wore a skirt. Why it wore a skirt, he had no idea, but he was sure Emily would pull a face at it when he showed her in the morning.

There was a soft knock at his door, the maid from that afternoon poking her head in, eyes scanning the room. But he’d packed all his clothes away neatly—or, most of them. His suitcase he’d hidden in his closet, refusing to unpack what his mother had packed for him. There was _nothing_ in here she needed to tidy or touch or just… mess with, and he shrunk under the cover and watched her warily.

“Is there anything you need before bed, Master Spencer?” she asked. He winced again, then shook his head, his words lost somewhere over the Atlantic or maybe back home with his mom and everything he loved. “Very well. If you need anything, there’s a button on your landline, just there. Press that and someone will be along.”

Spencer was looking at what she’d pointed out—he had a _phone_ in his room, what was he supposed to do with that? —so he didn’t see what was about to happen before it happened, and once it had happened it was too late to stop it.

She turned the light off, the sound of the door closing behind her covering his gasp.

It was pitch black. Not even a sliver of light crept in through the heavy curtains he wasn’t strong enough to pull back properly, no narrow beam coming in from under the doorway either. The thick walls muffled all sound, like he was drowning in the silence—at home, his window would have been open to hear the lake, or his door to hear his mom reading or talking or just _living._ Here…

The door was closed, the window too, and the dark was complete.

He dived under the itchy blankets, burrowing down until he couldn’t breathe and curling tight around Balthy, wishing she was warm and alive under his hands instead of soft and false. Wishing she was a flashlight, his mom, Ethan, _anything_. There, in a stifled cave of blankets he could barely breathe in, he finally let himself cry because he was sorry he’d ever agreed to this.

And he knew no one would be there to comfort him, and had never felt this alone.

 

But he wasn’t alone.

Since when had Emily ever taken no for an answer?

He was awake to hear his door creak open and then shut, paralysed with fear for a moment under his blankets as he heard soft footsteps padding quickly towards him. There was a pause of quiet and then the bed bounced violently, a weight thudding down from where it had been thrown recklessly upon it. The covers dipped and rustled under a slight weight crawling onto them and then across, something patting around the opening to his blanket cave until it pulled back the opening and a small light flickered in. It illuminated Emily, looking in at him with her face pale in the light.

“My room is too big,” she said to him, looking uncertain. “It’s so…”

“Quiet,” Spencer whispered, feeling the terrible room swallow his voice too. “Everything is so quiet here…”

“Yeah…”

They looked at each other, the cold air stealing in through the gaps and replacing the humid heat of his cave.

“There’s enough bed for at least seven Raptor Emilys,” Spencer said finally, hopefully.

Emily smiled, sliding in beside him and burrowing in tight, bringing one of the too many pillows with her. “And at least _three_ Just Spencers,” she added, looping one arm around him and the other around the pillow. “Goodnight, Spence.”

He hugged her back, the hurt receding just a little. He _was_ loved, even if just by this one girl and her terrible, cold feet digging under his.

“Goodnight, Emily.”

He could do this. One day at a time, he could do this. And, this time, when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t to silence; it was to her steady breathing beside him.


	2. The Au Pair

They were due to start at school in a week, Spencer only slightly less dreading it when he saw that they were to attend The American School in London. He already stuck out so terribly among peers that were _actually_ his peers—he really didn’t want to add his accent and country of origin to the list of reasons they could tease him. The homesickness hadn’t abated, especially as he could only call his mom every other night and the time-zone differences were prohibitive. The first time he’d heard her voice across the crackly line, all he’d been able to do was cry. The second, he’d had nothing to tell her, because nothing happened to him here. Nothing that he knew how to describe, anyway—not without sounding like he was complaining or ungrateful, even though everything he’d been given was so _much_. New clothes and a house that was a mansion and dinners served by other people and the stuff that people like him weren’t supposed to have, but people like Emily seemed somewhat accustomed to.

And sliding through the bathrooms in their socks was only fun for a few hours.

Unlike home, this place was a hive of activity. Spencer and Emily kept to the private wings, exploring as much as they could until the staff got tired of chasing them out of endless rooms they weren’t supposed to be in and sent them outside to play. But the gardens weren’t much better. There were definitely no hares allowed in these gardens, and no privacy either, with the closest they got hunkering down in the flowerbeds at the back of the ‘Summer Garden’. At least until a selection of visiting dignitaries flushed them out and got them in trouble with the steward again, a man who really didn’t seem to like them, especially not when Emily informed him that she’d only answer to ‘Raptor Emily’. Spencer doubted he was going to grant that request.

Elizabeth took them to the embassy in London, immediately handing them off to a young staffer to be shown around. It wasn’t very interesting, for either of them—or the staffer, who ended up taking them to the cafeteria for ice cream after Emily started yawning mid-tour. What Emily _really_ wanted was to see London, all these interesting places and people she caught glimpses of outside of the tinted windows of their town-car but hadn’t been able to actually experience yet. She wanted to grab her mom’s sleeve and remind her that she wasn’t six anymore, she didn’t want to be sat in the corner with a book and instructions to be quiet. Instead, she wanted to _see_ this new place she’d been dragged to, and she wanted to take Spencer out there and show him that there was more to their new life than the cloistered little bubble they’d been trapped in so far.

On the way back to Elizabeth’s office, she grilled the staffer on all of her favourite places to go in London. By the time they got back, Emily had a plan.

 

Spencer only left the office for ten minutes, darting up the hall to ask the secretary there for a pencil for Emily to draw with. By the time he returned, Emily was looking smug and Elizabeth thoughtful.

“A treat before you start school,” Elizabeth ordered, looking at him in a way that made him squirm uncomfortably, heating up under every inch of his stiff outfit in anticipation of being embarrassed. “Yes, I think that would be just the thing. You would enjoy an outing around London, wouldn’t you, Spencer?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered obediently. It was only kind of a lie. Right now, he _hated_ everything in London with a savagery he hadn’t thought possible—but it might be interesting?

“Very well,” it was decided. “Your au pair arrives Wednesday. We’ll give her a day to settle in, then I’ll instruct her to take you both out. I believe the London Zoo is fascinating, you’ll both enjoy that.”

“You’re welcome,” Emily murmured when he sat himself next to her, waiting out the rest of the day until they could go home. “Won’t it be fun?”

“What’s an au pair?” Spencer asked.

 

An au pair, it was discovered, was what Spencer had always thought a ‘nanny’ was, which they were surely too old for—at least, Emily thought so. Except this one would _live_ with them, in the room that was between his and Emily’s, and he wondered if this was going to make sneaking into each other’s rooms at night harder. Neither liked sleeping alone in this creepy old mansion, not once Spencer had convinced them both that there were definitely ghosts in buildings like this.

Her name, as it was discovered, was Kerrie, and she was _Australian._

“Do you have a pet kangaroo?” was the first question Emily asked her as they leaned through her bedroom door, watching her unpack, followed by, “Is everything in Australia upside-down?”

“Are dingoes as soft to pet as they look?” asked Spencer wistfully.

“Absolutely yes, to all three questions,” Kerrie answered. “You have to wear these special shoes with Velcro bottoms, so you don’t fall off the ground.”

Emily gasped.

Spencer sighed.

“Is Australian English very different from American English?” Spencer asked, curious despite himself. “Linguistical shifts are very predominant in isolated regions.”

“Oh, linguistical shifts, huh?” Kerrie stopped unpacking, hands on her hips and surveying him with just as much curiosity in her expression as he felt. Emily liked that—she wasn’t at all like her old au pair, a girl from France who was as shy as Spencer and boring to boot. This girl looked _fun—_ and her hair was long and black with blonde at the roots, plaited into an interesting coil that Emily wanted to touch and then learn how to do herself. “Well, I don’t think we’re all that different, except we don’t strip all the letters from doughnut and call it a day. Although, you do have to greet people in the traditional way in Australia.”

“What’s that?” Emily asked. “Is it ‘g’day’? The man on TV from Australia said g’day a lot, and he had a knife. Do you have a knife? Can I play with it?”

“Oh, that’s a myth, there are no knives in Australia. We use swords to cut our food, on account of all the wild animals—you always need to be armed in Australia. Come here, I’ll show you how to say hello.” She winked at Spencer, who was frowning at the rampant misinformation occurring right now and a little bit suspicious that this girl was _too_ flippant to have been picked out by Elizabeth. Kerrie waited until Emily had bounced to a stop in front of her before saying, “You say ‘g’day, mate’ and then do this.” Without a word, she flicked Emily on the nose, who giggled helplessly. “There, now go show Spencer.”

_Spencer,_ not ‘Master Reid’ or ‘Mr. Reid’ or any variation of. So relieved about this Spencer was that he didn’t even mind when Emily came over and flicked his nose, just readjusted his glasses and felt the smallest hint of ‘this might be okay’ slip in overtop of all the misery he had building inside him.

But Emily had already been distracted. “What’s that?” she asked, watching as Kerrie carried a bag of stuff from her suitcase to her ensuite bathroom. “Is that make-up? Do you have lipstick? Can I _see?”_

And, just like that, Spencer felt another hint of impending doom.

 

“Did you know,” Kerrie began as they watched the pelican at the zoo sift through his water for a meal. Spencer tensed, looking at Emily hopefully even though she’d shown no inclination to question Kerrie’s increasingly wild attempts to convince her that the world was crazier than they could have imagined. “That this zoo was bombed multiple times during World War II?”

Oh.

That seemed… feasible.

“Were any animals hurt?” Emily asked, eyes wide with horror. Spencer listened intently, one eye on the pelican, the other on Emily, and his hands busy trying to stop his scarf from getting blown away in the wind. He’d tried to mimic the way Emily had wound hers neatly around her neck, safe from the wind, and almost choked himself.

“Nah, I don’t think so. A couple escaped though, a donkey and her foal and a zebra. Imagine being a zebra in London, how out of place would you feel?”

Both Kerrie and Emily saw Spencer swallow and look down at his shoes, face flushed from the wind.

“Here.” Emily grabbed his scarf, winding it neatly around his throat just like hers. “Now you won’t lose it. What do you want to see next?”

Spencer shrugged listlessly, following them without much interest to the reptile house. Despite his moroseness, he still read every information board and filed the information away for later, finding himself standing next to the glass case containing emerald tree boas and watching one slither lazily around his tree. Emily had vanished—a quick check for her showed her over by the black mambas and other venomous reptiles, unsurprisingly, and Spencer went back to studying the boa. It looked glum in its glass world, despite everything that had been added to the exhibit to make it more like ‘home’. Spencer knew that was a hopeless endeavour. It _wasn’t_ home. It would never be home, no matter how many logs and rocks they added, or fake recorded whistles of rainforest birds. And the snake would always know that it was out of place and stuck in a box for people to gawk at, far away from its family and friends…

“Hi,” said Kerrie quietly. “Want to tell me about this guy?” She pointed to the snake, who tasted the air with his tongue and watched them back with black eyes.

“No,” replied Spencer. He didn’t.

“Alright. That’s alright. You know, it’s hard, isn’t it?”

Spencer stayed quiet, hands in the pockets of his new coat, trailing the pads of his fingers on the strange, thick fabric.

Kerrie continued, even though he wasn’t replying. “Moving away from your family… it sucks. I miss my dad a lot. And my sisters. Do you have siblings?”

“No.” Despite himself, Spencer couldn’t ignore a direct question, especially not when she was being so nice. “Just Emily, but she’s not really my sister. She doesn’t look like me at all, and we’re not very alike.”

“You’re really not.” Kerrie laughed a little, tugging a packet of candy out of her pocket and giving him one. “But she cares about you a lot.”

“I know…” The candy was hard, and Spencer rolled it around on his tongue, the snake slithering down into a ball on the floor of the exhibit and seemingly going to sleep, bored with them and the yelling children all around them. “I just…”

He didn’t know what he just, just that he _something._

“I don’t understand this place,” he finally finished. Not the zoo—he understood the purpose of a zoo, but the world he’d suddenly been thrust into, filled with staff and expectations of behaviour and unspoken rules that he was just supposed to _get._

“Oh boy, do I understand that,” Kerrie said with another laugh. Australians laughed a lot, Spencer was beginning to think, even when the conversation hurt like this one did. “When I saw the house they were sending me to I was like _what_. But, hey, you’re a sweet kid, and Emily is…” Emily was currently hissing at a snake, trying to mimic the head movements, much to the snake’s disapproval. “Emily’s real interesting. I think you just need to find things that you _do_ understand in this weird-arse situation, you know?”

“No?” Spencer replied after a moment. Not really.

“Can we go to the gift shop?” Emily asked, reappearing by their sides. “I want to buy something.”

“Well sure, your mom gave me money for you both. What do you want to buy?”

But Emily wouldn’t say.

 

Emily wouldn’t let Spencer see what’d she’d bought, hiding it in a gift-bag with a toy koala propped on top of it. On the way home, Kerrie regaled them on the history of the ‘drop bear’—Spencer could tell from Emily’s expression that she didn’t quite believe Kerrie about carnivorous koalas, but also that she didn’t _not_ believe her as little bit as well—until suddenly she slipped forward and tapped on the glass between them and the driver. “Wait a sec,” she asked, looking back at Spencer. “Hey, Spence? What’s somewhere back in the states that you love? Somewhere you loved going, somewhere that felt like home?”

That was an easy question to answer. “The library.”

And Kerrie smiled, looking at the driver. “You heard him,” she said. “Let’s find a library.”

 

“This is better,” Emily told him, finding him piling the stacks of books he’d borrowed on the desk in his room. “Your room wasn’t your room enough without any books in it.”

Spencer smiled at her, a little wary of the bag she was hugging to her chest. “Yeah, I like it a little better now, I guess,” he said. He’d brought books with him—his favourites, and some of his mom’s, but not _enough_ , and it was nice to have some more to page through. Maybe a step, no matter how small, toward normalcy in this strange, new place.

Without further ado, Emily shoved the bag at him, letting go before he’d grabbed it properly and almost scattering the contents across the floor. But he saved it, barely, and opened it curiously to find that inside was a thick pad of zoo-themed notepaper and a packet of pens. There were even a couple of postcards, and a roll of stamps dropped atop the lot, with envelopes under it all.

“I had to get the stamps and envelopes from Mom’s office, but the rest is from the zoo,” Emily explained, grabbing the bag off him once more as he failed to unpack it fast enough and dumping the lot on the bed. “Look, we can write letters to your mom. I will too—we’ll have like, a letter writing hour every night and tell her _everything_. And she’ll write back every day too and eventually it’ll be like you’re just talking, except better because they’re words that _last_.” She stopped her rambling explanation to breathe, looking at him worriedly. “If you want to, I mean…”

He did.

“I do…” He didn’t really know how to thank her properly so, instead of trying, he pushed the bag aside and hugged her tightly, hiding how he was sniffling into the shoulder of her own thick coat. “I really, really do.”


	3. The Horrendous Haunting of Winfield House

When it started raining in London, apparently it never, ever stopped, or so it seemed to the children as they impatiently spent any time they weren’t at school cooped up in the private wing of Winfield House. School was school—it wasn’t that exciting—but home was _also_ failing to be exciting. The only time either left the building was for school or, on the weekends, for church.

After three weeks of this, they were sure they’d never see the sun again.

Kerrie, in an attempt to forestall any temper tantrums, made sure to detour past the library as often as possible on the way home from school, letting Spencer max out not only his borrowing limit, but also hers and Emily’s as well. The stacks of books that had quickly filled not only Spencer’s room but also the sitting room set aside for the children’s use had gone a long way to soothing Spencer’s homesickness, although he was still glumly awaiting his first round of letters to reach his mom and be promptly responded to. Unfortunately, this generosity on her part may have contributed to what came next.

Emily and Spencer were alone in the sitting room, Spencer curled up on a couch with a stack of books beside him, his nose buried in another, and Emily on the floor staring grumpily at the TV. It had come with the room, already stocked with piles of movies for them to watch and its own VCR player, but today she didn’t want to watch any of them. Beside her lay an abandoned book on the wildlife of Britain, the hedgehog emblazoned on the cover the source of her righteous anger. The book had informed Emily that, if she left milk and bread outside, she would be able to see hedgehogs eating it; her _mother_ had informed her that if she saw one single bowl left in the gardens, she’d lose access to the kitchens.

Emily wanted to see a hedgehog and wasn’t at all pleased to be told no. Nor had she abided by that no—by the eagle statue, hidden carefully in the hedging beside it, was a bowl of milk that Emily had been sneakily refilling whenever the rain abated. But she hadn’t been able to get out there for _days_ as it had continued raining furiously, and she was worried that her hedgehogs would leave without her ever getting to see, or touch, their silly, spikey bits.

“This book is about this house,” Spencer said suddenly, his voice loud over the crash of the endless rain on the windows. “Look, there’s pictures. And an old blueprint. Want to know what a dumbwaiter is? Apparently, we used to have them.”

“Not unless they have hedgehogs in them,” Emily said moodily, dragging the book over her face and closing her eyes, hoping that it might suffocate her and end this endless boredom.

“Oh, well… no. How about this—did you know that this house is designed in a Neo-Georgian architectural style, with Doric columns flanking the central doors, carrying parapets that—”

“Spencer…” If anything, he was actually making the boredom _worse_.

“Sorry.” There was silence for a while, the rhythmic turning of pages doing little to help her mood, or how bored she was. “This page says there used to be ‘orgies’ here. I don’t know what that is, but that sounds interesting. We could look it up?”

“We could _not_ ,” Emily snapped, rolling onto her belly and letting the book fall flat. “Seriously, Spencer, I don’t want to learn a bunch of fusty old words about buildings. Why do you only read such _boring_ books?”

Spencer looked at her, hurt in his eyes. She refused to apologise; buildings were boring. Nothing would stop them being boring, not parapets, not orgies, not dumbwaiters, not nothing. She would be bored forever and ever and ever and ever—

“I have a book on haunted houses?” he offered, sliding the Winfield house book aside and picking up another. “Want to read this?”

Grumbling, Emily took it and slowly flicked through, ignoring the text in favour of the pictures. Claw-marks in ceilings and chains and bloody faucets were all wonderful fun normally…

But she was still bored right now.

“I’m going to go check on my hedgehogs,” she announced, throwing that book down and going to get her boots.

Spencer just hummed noncommittedly, well aware that this would get Emily in trouble. “Don’t get caught,” he warned her. As soon as her footsteps had faded, he returned to his books, glad for the peace and the blanket around his legs.

 

“Miss Emily, stop right there.”

Uh oh.

Emily stopped and sheepishly turned around, hiding the empty glass bottle that had once contained milk behind her back, sure that she could talk her way out of this. Maybe. Possibly. Or not, as she turned and looked down past the furious looking steward to find that she’d tracked a truly atrocious amount of mud in behind her, black and smeary on the white marble floors. Definitely not, as she looked down more and found that she was still actively dripping from her ruined dress and stockings, her shoes more mud than shoe. Maybe… just maybe… crawling through the hedges in the rain to try and find what she thought was a hedgehog—but turned out to be a rock—had been a mistake.

“I didn’t go outside,” she tried, dripping merrily on the floor. “The outside came to _me_.”

“I see,” said Mr Chambers. “Your mother’s instructions were explicit. You were to stay inside the house— _no_ exceptions.”

Emily scowled, giving him such a ferocious look that he felt his already-fraught temper spike. Everything had gone terribly today, with staff off sick and the dinner with the Indonesian ambassador and his consulate later this week becoming more complicated by the second and a tour later today, and now _this_ mess.

“I don’t care,” Emily announced with feeling. “She can’t tell me what to do, she’s not here. And inside is _shit_.” Up went his eyebrows at the ferocity in her voice, his lips thinning further until Emily fancied that maybe they’d vanish completely off his face. She hated him—hated his stuck-up face and his stupid accent and his suit and tie and stick-up-his-bum posture and the way he treated her like a total child even though she wasn’t, she _wasn’t._

Eric Chambers, who was looking down on what was most definitely a moody child who, in his opinion, was acting unbearably immature right now, had no time for her right now. Children were _not_ his job.

“Miss Grace, could you please take Miss Emily down to her bath and clean her up. Since she’s acting like a wicked child right now, please stay with her until she is tidy. If her mother sees her looking like this, imagine her disgust.” He gave her another cool look, seeing her face reddening and her fists clenching tight, even as further mud dribbled from her hair onto her cheek. “If she requires scrubbing, do so. Her mother expects her to be well presented for dinner, and good lord, we cannot put her at the table _dripping_.”

Emily, as she registered that she was going to be bathed like an infant, took a deep breath, before looking the maid who’d been sent to drag her to the bathroom dead in the eye.

“I think I’d rather stay muddy,” she announced. “So, there.”

And the maid swallowed, sure that what was coming was not going to be fun for anyone involved.

 

Spencer became suddenly aware that the rain beating against the windows was doing so in darkness, the sun having set at some point without him noticing.

Emily still had not returned.

Stomach growling a little, he abandoned his warm nest and books and padded out into the cold halls, searching for his friend. She wasn’t in her bedroom, or his, and nor was she in the room with the piano or sitting on the stairs in the front hall. She wasn’t in the kitchen when he checked there, although he did get a warm slice of bread from the head cook, who liked him, and continued his search munching on that. Dinner wasn’t for another two hours, which meant he had time to find her before Elizabeth came home and expected them to report to her on what pursuits they’d spent their day undertaking. He wondered if she’d know what ‘orgies’ were and made a mental note to take the book with him to ask.

In the end, he found Emily, or rather, he found evidence of her. The bathroom they shared had light streaming from the crack of the slightly ajar door, a single sleeve from Emily’s sweater keeping it open. Inside, Spencer could hear raised voices and soft splashing sounds. He knocked, poking his head in when he heard Emily make an angry noise—expecting danger. But, all he found was Kerrie looking amused, one of the maids in tears, and the very top of Emily’s head observable from the rim of the bath, her fingers curled over the edge. He paused, cheeks flushing red when he realised she was _in_ the bath, but no one yelled at him to leave so he hovered awkwardly. From the bathtub, Emily watched him with narrowed eyes, only her eyes upwards visible.

“Come on, Em, the water has gone long cold,” Kerrie was wheedling. “Get out the bath and we’ll get you all dry and warm, how about that?”

Emily sunk lower. Spencer heard the sound of grumpy bubbles being blown in the water.

“You’re going to get me in trouble, Miss Emily,” the maid tried, wiping her face. “You _must_ get out the bath. You’ve been in there for hours!”

“You wanted me in the bath,” came Emily’s muffled voice, skin squeaking on the tub. “I’m in the bath, _forever._ I think I’ll stay here until I die.”

“Oh my _gosh,”_ the maid cried, covering her eyes. “I’m going to get fired.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have forced her into the bath,” Kerrie responded sharply. “She’s ten, not three, you could have asked.”

“Yeah,” came a muffled voice from the tub, more sounds of bubbles being moodily blown following. Spencer couldn’t see Emily’s head anymore. “You could have _asked_.”

Spencer shifted his foot uncertainly, not sure what to do or how to help, putting it down and the sole of his shoe squeaking on a muddy puddle. Both women looked at him, the maid looking scandalised.

“You can’t be in here, out!” she gasped, darting over and flapping her hands at him. “Quick, out, before someone sees!”

“I can help,” Spencer protested, backing up and bumping his shoulder on the doorway. He watched Emily reappear, hair freshly wet and teeth beginning to chatter. Knowing Emily as he did, he knew that being freezing cold wouldn’t be enough to get her out if she’d decided to prove a point—she was stubborn like that. “Hey, Em, did you know that an approximate annual two-hundred and thirty-four thousand unintentional nonfatal injuries among persons aged under fifteen years occurred in bathrooms, for an injury rate of ninety-six point four per one-hundred thousand population?”

Everyone stared at him.

“I was reading a book on architectural failings,” he explained, embarrassed. “Bathrooms are one of the deadliest rooms in the house, and I suppose their danger increases the longer you remain in them. Surprisingly, they’re also the most _haunted_ rooms in most houses, with a disproportionate number of supernatural sightings taking place in the bathroom or surroundings—”

“I think I’m ready to get out now,” Emily said hurriedly.

Smug, and refusing to show it because he knew she’d change her mind, Spencer scampered from the room so she could get out of the bath, the maid following him and Kerrie trying to stifle laughter.

“You’re welcome,” he muttered, earning a glare from the maid. Well, honestly. You’d never get anywhere with Emily by _shouting_ at her. That was just obvious.

 

Emily wasn’t at dinner, having proceeded to compound her anger at being scolded by refusing to get dressed and leave her room. Spencer ate his quickly before offering to take her tray up to her, sure that that was probably a better idea than the maid, who was still mad at her, taking the food up. Elizabeth, who’d been utterly furious to come home to reports of her daughter’s behaviour, was glad for the excuse to not have to look at her for tonight, waving Spencer away with one hand, distracted by the thought of painkillers for a thumping headache and an early bed before the mess she was facing tomorrow with their upcoming dinner.

Spencer found Emily sitting at her desk in her room, bare feet poking out from the hem of a fluffy bathrobe and her head wrapped tightly in a towel. She watched him enter with her toes wiggling, not saying anything until he’d closed the door and slid the tray onto her desk, taking a seat on her bed.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” he asked curiously, trying to figure out the logistics of her towel hat. “Is your hair inside it?” Instead of answering, she slid from the chair and padded over, grabbing a spare towel from her bed and showing him how to do it. It took several goes to get the hang of, Emily giggling a little as he tried to do the flick she’d done with it and almost fell off the bed.

“So, I’ve been thinking about _Chambers_ ,” Emily said finally, danger in the stony tone to her voice. “He works late sometimes, doesn’t he?”

Uh oh. Spencer paused with his hands on his own towel hat, watching her carefully. “Don’t do it,” he warned her. “You’re already in so much trouble, Em, just let them calm down. They’re stressed because of some dinner thing, you don’t want to go making that worse—”

“He shouldn’t have called me a wicked child.” Emily was still seething over that. “And he made that horrible woman put me in the _bath_ , like I’m four! I don’t need anyone to help me, I’m fine on my own! They can… they can… they can _shove_ it.”

Spencer could already tell; she wasn’t going to drop this. Not when she’d been so thoroughly called out, and in front of people.

“I’m not getting involved,” he said. “I’m going to go back to the sitting room, in front of the fire where it’s warm, and write Mom a letter. You should bring your dinner and sit with me… but I’m not going to make you.” With that, he unwrapped his hat, handed her towel back, and walked to the door, hoping she’d take the smart option for once.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t.

 

In the following three hours until bedtime, Spencer observed the following.

At first, Emily had come and sat with him, the book on haunted houses open on her lap and her face scrunched up, clearly deep in thought. That had been fine. In fact, it was positively relaxing, since Spencer was sure that maybe the night could pass without Emily causing chaos.

But, then, she vanished. He looked up to find her dinner plate empty and the book gone, Emily too.

Uh oh.

Half an hour later, she returned to her spot, still without speaking. Watching her carefully out of the corner of his eye, mid-letter, Spencer noted that there was flour on her dressing gown. “Where’d you go?” he asked warily.

“Took my plate down,” Emily lied with a sharp smile, turning the page of her book with white-frosted hands.

Twenty minutes later, she vanished again. When she reappeared again, it was with one of the big fire pokers and her boots, sitting by the window and wedging a boot on the end before walking out with it over her shoulder like a chimney-sweep with his broom. Spencer, very determinedly, refused to pay any more attention to whatever calamity she was brewing.

And he kept ignoring her, even when she came back without boot or poker, but with mud on her sleeves and carrying one of the tape recorders from the offices in the working area of the house. Spencer looked at the tape recorder, felt doom approaching, looked back at his book, and wondered if it was too late to go sit in the kitchen forming an alibi with the staff. And he kept looking at his book, even as Emily turned on the TV and put in an animal documentary on the VCR, fast-forwarding through until she found the lynxes during mating season and propped the tape recorder by the TV to record them screeching with their horrible, people-like voices.

“You’re going to get us both in trouble,” he told her retreating back as she left the room.

“Nonsense,” she said. “When do I ever get us in trouble?”

 

They both left Elizabeth’s office, with Emily sheepish and Spencer feeling thoroughly scolded despite having done nothing.

“Really, Em?” he asked her. “You set up a _haunting_ in his office?”

“I mean, it’s brilliant,” she pointed out, which was true. “And he definitely got a shock.” That was also true. “And you’re a _little_ impressed.”

That was true too. The flour on the overhead fan was mildly amusing, the muddy footprints along the ceiling leading right out of a fourth-floor window… that was _fantastic._ And playing the lynx recording over the staff phone lines was inspired, although it had gotten both of their phones confiscated from their rooms. Spencer was pretty sure he was only in trouble because Elizabeth didn’t believe that Emily could have thought it all up on her own, which she had, which was _incredible._ He was proud of her, even if he was a little annoyed right now. But now they had to go straight to bed, no lights on, and his stomach clutched tight as he realised that this meant they’d probably be watched all night… with no chance for either of them to sneak into the other’s room. A night, in the dark, with the storm outside, and he thought again of the books on haunted houses and swallowed hard.

“Do you think you’ll be able to sneak out tonight?” he asked her in a whisper, hearing footsteps coming towards them. “They seem pretty angry…”

“I’ll try,” she whispered back.

But, despite this, no one pushed his door open and slipped into the room with him that night. He lay awake for what felt like hours, blanket over his head and staring at the roof, wondering if he was brave enough to run across and turn the light on. Except he couldn’t, because they were in trouble and he doubted anyone would listen to him if he tried to explain with how mad they were at the moment…

It never crossed his mind to have Emily tell them he’d had nothing to do with it. As always, he’d taken half the blame, because that was how they’d always done it.

There was a crack of lightning outside, a rolling boom of thunder, and Spencer leapt out of his bed and darted across the dark room, yanking the door open and scurrying fast down the hall until he turned and found himself in the dim light of the hallway lamp. Breathing finally, his chest loosening, he slowed to a tiptoe past Kerrie’s room and beyond, down to where Emily’s door was closed.

The door opened before he reached it, Emily appearing with her face pale and feet bare on the floorboards. “I keep thinking about that book,” she whispered, tiptoeing over to him and glancing at Kerrie’s door. “And the ghosts…”

“Yeah…” They looked at each other, ears straining for even the softest sounds of haunting around them, both of them shivering nervously. The lamp by their side cast a warm ring of light that neither wanted to slip away from. And, outside, the storm rolled on. “Maybe we can find a flashlight? There might be one in the storage rooms by the kitchen.”

“Okay.” Emily led the way, only pausing a little before darting out of the lamplight. Spencer followed, eyes locked on the white wisp of her nightie in the gloom. But they hadn’t even made it into the back halls leading to the staff rooms before there was another _boom_ and the lights snapped off, plunging them into the dark.

Spencer skidded to a stop with a gasp, hearing Emily squeak with fear. In the dark, in this corridor they never went into, the unfamiliarity of their surroundings was absolute. Something bumped his shoulder and he swung around to try and look at it, banging his hip on a cupboard and leaping back with a yelp. He heard a noise, turning around and seeing a white shape jump towards him, away from a shadow that loomed horrendously in the outline of the window.

He screamed.

Emily screamed too, because he was screaming and because she’d realised someone was standing there and because she’d stubbed her toe when she’d leapt away, both of them screeching in terror until a light flickered on and they were illuminated under the flashlight held by—

Uh oh.

“Of course,” Mr Chambers said coolly upon finding them huddled there. “You couldn’t _possibly_ behave for one night and stay in your beds after thoroughly ruining my office and the paintwork on the fourth-floor ceiling. That’s far too much to ask of ghoulish children like you two.”

They both looked up at him, too shocked and scared to argue back. Emily’s lip began to tremble a bit, realising they were going to get in trouble for trying to find a light to stop being scared; Spencer looked down at the floor and tried not to show how upset he was.

But Chambers didn’t keep yelling, just sighed as another thunderclap boomed outside. The lights flickered back on around them, properly showing how cold and frightened they both looked. “If you’re hungry, you could have asked instead of sneaking,” he said finally, feeling a little sorry for them despite how awful they had been today.

But neither answered, Emily just looking at Spencer without saying a word.

“Are you hungry?” Chambers prompted again, confused by their silence. Emily had never hesitated to shout back before when she wanted something, or felt wronged. “Thirsty? Miss Emily?”

Spencer whispered something in a choked voice that was impossible to hear over the rain outside.

“What was that?”

Up flickered wide, worried eyes, his throat bobbing before the boy spoke again. “I’m scared of the dark,” he managed, cheeks burning red and eyes bright with shame. “We were trying to find a light.”

“I see.” Chambers kept looking at them, the flashlight in his hands heavy. “Well, come with me.”

Sure that they were in for it now, the children expected to be led to Elizabeth’s room for another scolding. Spencer was thinking of his mom and how she’d let him sleep in with her when he was frightened; Emily was regretting ever being scared of ghosts in the first place now that they were in the light of the hall.

But they weren’t led to Elizabeth’s room; instead, they followed the steward to his office, Spencer wincing when he saw floury shoeprints still visible in the corners of the room and in hard-to-reach corners of the shelves.

Chambers reached up to one shelf, getting down a glass globe on a heavy stand that he showed to them. “Here,” he said gruffly, flicking a switch and startling them both as it lit up, the light in the stand illuminating the glass globe and sending patterns of snowflakes to dance on the walls. They stared, entranced, as the light shifted colours. “Christmas present from my mother. I never use it, it may as well come in handy somewhere useful. Do you need me to walk you back to your rooms?”

“No,” managed Spencer, taking the globe with hands he was worried weren’t steady enough to hold it. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you,” parroted Emily, finally looking uncomfortable. They were shooed from the room, Emily pausing at the doorway to look back at the man she didn’t hate quite as much anymore. “Sir?”

“Mm?”

“I’m sorry for being wicked. I won’t do it again.” And, with that rare apology said, Emily ran back to her room, Spencer following carefully with the globe in his hands.

After that, his room was never quite as frightening again, nor was the steward quite as unapproachable. And an uncertain kind of peace fell between them.


	4. A No Good, Absolutely Awful, Downright Terrible Birthday

Their eleventh birthdays were coming up and they were both completely and absolutely overexcited for them. In all technicality, Emily’s had already passed—but she was refusing to turn eleven until Spencer had also turned eleven beside her, which suited Elizabeth just fine. She’d made a promise to Diana that she would celebrate the children’s birthdays with them if they were unable to take them home in time to see Diana, and it was far easier to uphold that promise once than it was twice in short succession. Therefore, a date was set and decided: three days before Spencer’s birthday—and Emily’s too, she declared—they would spend the day going to all the most wonderful places around London with Elizabeth. Up into the sky on the London Eye and Spencer was giddy about the promise of the national museums of science and history—Emily having latched onto the promise of the giant toy shop, Hamleys, and wouldn’t be budged from dreaming of it and writing endless terrible poetry of how magical a place like that must be.

But it wasn’t to be.

 

They’d been in London over a month now and everyone was adjusting. Spencer missed the Sometimes Homes deeply and unconditionally, his entire being still off-kilter at being so far from the world he knew as home. He missed Balthy, despite knowing she wasn’t there waiting for him to return, and he missed his mom. Sometimes, at night when no one was listening and Emily was deeply asleep, he’d slip out of bed and sneak over to his giant wardrobe and sit just inside, with his stuffed-Balthy on his lap as he whispered to her about how much he missed her and Ethan and how he really, really wished he could see her again and pet her ears just one last time.

Tonight, he was telling her about their upcoming birthdays.

“There’s a glass case in one of the museums,” he whispered into her soft ears, “and it’s full of hummingbirds, all stuffed, but not like you. These hummingbirds used to be real hummingbirds, but now they’re stuck in a dusty case with hundreds of other stuffed hummingbirds, and I wonder what kind of a life that is? Stuck being pretty behind glass all day and forever, without any of your organs. It’s called taxidermy and I think Emily will like them, especially if they talk about how they got all the inside bits outside, but I don’t think I like it much. I wouldn’t have made the real Balthy into a stuffed Balthy, even if it was an option. But I’m excited to go anyway because Mom hasn’t replied to my letters yet and I think if I write to her about all these amazing things, she can’t possibly not reply. It’ll be so exciting for her, and for me, and I can’t _wait_ to read her voice. I know it’s not her voice, not really, but I think I’ll be able to hear her in how she reads…” He bowed low, making sure the next words were secret, just for them. “I’m scared I’m going to forget her voice. I had a dream the other night that I went home, but I’d gotten bigger and taller and all grown up and Mom didn’t recognise me and I didn’t remember her and we walked right past each other and never found each other again. And I know that’s illogical, but I’m scared of it, Balth, I just want to be sure she doesn’t ever forget me or, I don’t know, replace me…”

Stuffed hares, he’d found, were much, much better to hide tears in than real hares were. Less biting, for one. And no fleas.

“You’ll see,” he said finally, rubbing the damp patch on the stuffed Balthy’s fur. “Our birthdays will make everything better, and then _Halloween,_ I _love_ Halloween. That can’t be different here, right?”

Halloween, he was sure, was eternal.

Taking Balthy with him, he tip-toed back to bed and slept soundly, the hare cuddled in his arms and Emily only grumbling a little when his cold toes touched her.

 

The next morning, they woke to chaos. They were almost late to school because, despite being ready and waiting bang on time just like they always were—mostly because Spencer was careful to ensure Emily was on time when she’d really just rather sleep in—Kerrie didn’t meet them to take them to school. Instead, as Spencer kept checking his watch anxiously and Emily chewed on her hair, Mr Chambers appeared and gruffly told them to get in the car, refusing to answer any questions they asked of him about what had happened and why he was taking them instead of Kerrie. And it was a maid waiting for them when they finished school, just as tight-lipped as Mr Chambers had been that morning. As soon as they were home and changed out of their uniforms, they were marched up to Elizabeth’s office, waiting politely to be called.

“There you are, what took you so long?” Elizabeth said absently as they walked in, looking harassed with a stack of paperwork in front of her and the light on her desk phone blinking in three different places.

“We were at school,” was Emily’s pert reply. “But we don’t have to go anymore if it’s inconvenient.”

Elizabeth ignored that, even as Spencer sighed at his friend.

“I’m afraid Kerrie has been called away on a family emergency,” Elizabeth continued, laying her paperwork aside and paying attention to just them. “Her mother is very unwell, so I flew her home this morning. She won’t be returning, sadly.”

“Oh no, I hope she’s okay,” Spencer fretted.

“Back to Australia? I wish I could have gone,” said Emily, who was sure that Kerrie’s mother would be just fine because parents were _always_ just fine, unless they were Spencer’s mom, but she’d be fine too after some doctoring. “I would have touched a kangaroo _and_ gotten to carry a knife.”

“Emily,” scolded Elizabeth without much heart. “Unfortunately, the au pair service I use is unable to replace her just yet—so for the foreseeable future, you’ll be taken to and from school by any available staff until I can properly vet a suitable replacement. This means straight to and from school and no dallying. The staff are very busy and you are both the least of their concerns, do you understand?”

“Does this mean we have to do our own baths?” Emily asked, perking up. Spencer, who’d been doing his own baths and showers since he was old enough to know left from right, perked up too. He _hated_ that Kerrie always checked the water temperature for him, like he was too stupid to realise he was being burned if she didn’t make sure. “And do our own chores?”

“Yes, it does. The staff can’t be picking up after your everyday messes, although they’ll still maintain your wings. It also means you’ll be doing your homework alone, unless I can find a tutor—I expect that your homework _will_ be done, and to standard. That means both of you.”

Despite her words, she only looked at Emily as she said this.

“Do I get to skip out on church?” Emily tried.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“But _Spencer_ doesn’t have to go to church if he doesn’t want to—”

“I don’t mind going to church,” said Spencer, always the mediator. “I like the hymns.”

Emily shot him a look that promised she’d get him back for this betrayal—probably by not letting him touch her hedgehogs, if she ever succeeded in attracting any—and opened her mouth; Elizabeth, however, cut her off.

“That’s enough. I’m very busy, you can both go now. You’re eleven now—too old for around the clock care anyway. I may consider not replacing Kerrie at all if you can both show that you’re capable.”

“We’re _so_ capable,” Emily announced, marching right out of there without asking the only question on Spencer’s mind. Since he’d been left alone to ask it, he did, even though it took three goes and Elizabeth didn’t seem aware that he hadn’t exited alongside Emily.

“Madam Ambassador?” he peeped, seeing her jump in her chair, pen tapping her glasses as her hand flew up to stop them slipping off her nose.

“Spencer, my lord. You frightened me. What is it?”

He swallowed, whispered, realised she couldn’t hear him, and then tried again: “Are we still going on our birthday trip? To… to the museums?”

Elizabeth nodded sharply. “Yes, yes of course,” she replied, wishing he’d leave her to get back to her work. “I’m taking you anyway, Kerrie’s absence won’t change that.”

“Oh good.” He shuffled in place before managing a, “Thank you!” and vanishing out of the door, sure that everything would be okay if only this day went well enough that he could write to his mother about it.

 

And they kept to their word: even without Kerrie, they were dressed and ready to before breakfast had even been served on the morning of their eleventh birthday party. Emily told everyone who would listen that she was eleven now, making sure that they understood how very grown up and important she was now and how she was still vying to be called Raptor Emily, if that was an option that came with age and wisdom. Spencer remained quiet, his notebook on his lap and the stuffed Balthy beside him with one of Emily’s doll’s hats on, all the better to accompany them to the museums today without the rain getting her fur wet. And then they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Breakfast was cleared away so they moved to the front doors, sitting on the steps leading down to the foyer with their bags packed beside them. Emily picked at a thread on her pants. Spencer fretted. And time ticked on. Eight a.m. Nine a.m. Half past nine.

Eleven o’clock.

Lunchtime.

And all the time, Emily’s expression was getting stormier and stormier, as though one of the clouds from outside had come to settle upon the little girl’s head. Spencer just stared at his notepad on his lap, saying nothing even when spoken to. The staff who saw them scurried off wondering much the same as the children: where was Elizabeth?

Finally, it was lunchtime and footsteps that were too firm to be a staff member clicked towards them. They both looked up, hopeful, only to find Mr Chambers standing there looking down at them, his shiny shoes loud on the polished floors.

“Are we going soon?” Emily asked, the storm cloud still threatening. Spencer stood as Emily did, lingering behind her like the miserable shadow of that storm, his expression just as fraught and his notebook clutched tight in one hand, Balthy under his other arm. “It’s getting late. What if the big toy store shuts before we can go? I wanted to buy a _raptor_.”

“Your mother has been called away,” Mr Chambers said finally, a little stiffly as he tried, and failed, to find a gentle way to tell them. “I’m afraid I wasn’t aware that you hadn’t been informed. Your birthday celebrations will have to wait. However, I’ve spoken to the staff, and they’re very excited to help bake you both a cake. Won’t that be fun?”

Silence met his attempt at cheer, neither of the children’s faces shifting an inch.

Spencer spoke first. “Could we possibly go to the normal store then?” he asked with his voice a thin kind of rasp that Mr Chambers had never heard from him before. “Please? If we can’t go on our trip, maybe we could spend the day decorating?”

“Decorating?” asked Chambers, confused by this boy. For their birthday? Well, maybe… but it would have to be confined to their wing…

“For Halloween.” Spencer attempted a watery kind of smile. This was fine. They didn’t need an expensive adventure to have something interesting to write home about. Mom loved Halloween too. So long as he had Halloween, he still had his mom. “We can decorate for Halloween. Can’t we?”

There was a long quiet that only served to make Spencer’s slow inhale of breath more audible as he recognised that what he was getting was not a resounding ‘yes’.

“Ah,” said Chambers. “Well, I’m sure that some sectors within England celebrate Halloween, it’s not quite what you would be used to. I’m given to believe that it’s quite a _thing_ in the States. I’m afraid decorating Winfield for Halloween is quite out of the question, not that anyone would come out here looking for lollies. But never mind that, we do have Guy Fawkes Day—bonfires are fun, yes? That’s not so far from now. Anyway, that aside, come help with your cake. We’ll need your assistance to know what flavours are palatable.”

Emily stepped forward, lured away from her furious mood by the promise of both cake _and_ a possible future bonfire, but Spencer didn’t move, just stood there clutching his hare and his notepad with his face rapidly reddening.

“I want to go to my room,” was all he said in a tight, hard voice when Chambers gestured for him to hurry up.

“Nonsense, don’t be silly,” Chambers snapped irritably, unsure why the child was being so suddenly difficult despite Emily’s amicability. There would be other birthdays, after all. “You’ll miss out on cake that we’re all working very hard on. Perhaps even some lollies. Or candy, is that what you call it? Candy, yes, for your birthday.”

Spencer took another deep breath, feeling something very much unlike anything he’d felt before welling up in his chest. It was almost like wanting to cry, except he didn’t want to cry. It was almost like shaking, like something was coiling up tight ready to spring apart… but he didn’t want to shake. He wanted to _yell_. He wanted to get that horrible feeling that was inside him out, the feeling that was very much like wanting to scream and shout and hit everything around him until this horrible house and this horrible city and all the horrible people inside it all fell down and they sent him home to be happy again.

“I want to go to my room,” he repeated, feeling the cover of his notebook buckle a little under his fingers. It was taking every iota of concentration he possessed not to give in to the monstrous feeling, and he was starting to think he might understand why Emily raged as much as she did when angry. If this was what she felt, he thought he might rage too.

“You’re coming to the kitchens,” Chambers said, which was a mistake.

“Spencer, hurry up,” said Emily impatiently, which was her not recognising the danger signs of a rare temper on her always-calm friend.

“No,” he said. “I’m going to my room.”

And maybe it would have ended there, except Emily sighed loudly and exclaimed, “Stop being _dumb.”_

He exploded.

“I hate it here!” he screamed at her, the closest possible target for his misplaced rage. “I wish I’d never come here with you, it’s awful and lonely and _miserable_ and no one here loves us, so why are we even here!? We might as well be _orphans!_ This is a horrible place and you’re all horrible people and I want my _mom_ and not yours, she’s _horrid_ , and you’re horrid, and I’m going home!”

With that, to the collective shock of the staff who’d been summoned by the sound of his yelling, he made a noise that was every bit of the pain and misery he’d been bottling for the last month—a scream that was more of a sob by the end of it—and threw his notebook with deadly force right into a large mirror hanging across the hall, turning and sprinting upstairs despite the calamity of crashing glass behind him.

Emily stared, her mouth hanging open. No one else moved.

The first sound that followed was a soft whimper. Chambers, who was feeling very much like he’d witnessed something very few before ever had despite only knowing the boy for a month, looking down at Emily and groaned silently. Her dark eyes were brimming, a dangerous flush coming to her cheeks, and he braced for a second whirlwind of furious pre-teen fury.

It didn’t come. Emily just stepped forward, a maid making a noise as glass crunched under her nicest shoes, and picked up the abandoned Balthy.

“Be careful of glass,” Chambers warned, reaching for the hare toy that Spencer had thrown down before absconding, but Emily turned and fixed him with such a look that he froze before taking it. It wasn’t her usually spiteful glare or ferocious scowl. It was utter, pure misery and, even as they watched, she began to cry silently, hugging the hare toy to her chest and barely making a sound except for her rasping breath.

“We can still make your cake, Miss Emily,” said a quiet voice in the silence, one of the maids. Chambers watched Emily carefully, to see if this was an act of manipulation of some kind… but, unlike every tantrum he’d ever seen from her, she didn’t rise to the bait.

“I want to go to bed,” she whispered, looking at Chambers with her eyes so wet he winced to see them and snot running from her nose to add to the mess around her mouth. “I want my mom.” And there was nothing Chambers could do but wave for a maid to take her, the little girl who was maybe just as miserable as the boy upstairs, even if it was only now that she was showing it in a way that felt _real_.

That bothered him for the rest of the night.

 

That evening, his feet took him on his usual path around the halls of the building he’d devoted his life to, but then they took him away from his usual haunt. Into the private wings, of which Elizabeth’s was empty. He couldn’t help but feel curious about how the two children had settled into bed. There hadn’t been a single sound from either of them for the rest of the day, the maid reporting that Emily was curled up in her room and refusing to speak and that Spencer had done exactly as threatened and retired despite the hour, dragging all his bedding from the bed and setting up a nest in his wardrobe that he’d vanished into. They’d left him there, wary of disturbing him while his temper was so raw, but Chambers was worried the boy was _still_ in there. He couldn’t sleep in a wardrobe—imagine Elizabeth’s reaction when she returned!

But, when he quietly made his way up the hall outside the children’s bedrooms, Emily’s door was standing open. Heart faltering for a moment as he looked in and found the bed empty, he imagined kidnappings and ransoms and all sorts of terrible things, hurrying along to the next room.

Here, he found her. A ghostly little waif in her white nightgown curled in a tight, shivering ball on the floor outside Spencer’s room, she was using the hare as a pillow with her mouth pressed tight into it and her knees to her chest. Despite the floor that was cold enough it made Chambers’ knees ache when he crouched beside her, she was fast asleep. In the dim light of the nearby lamp, he could see ruddy, tear-streaked cheeks and bitten-down nails curled fast around her toy. She was damp and snotty and her breath was rattling nastily and it was all things that he disliked immensely about children, but he also couldn’t _leave_ her there.

He stood and tried the door, finding it locked and frowning at that. Locks on a child’s room were also troubling. What was he to do? The maids were home for the night and Elizabeth was still away, leaving him in charge of the children and household in the absence of their au pair.

Should he… carry her?

He had no idea how to carry a child, especially not an eleven-year-old who was all awkward angles and pointy parts. Finally, he reached down and shook her shoulder carefully, watching as she jolted awake and stared up at him, wide-eyed and confused, before looking at the door with an expression like she didn’t understand how it was _still_ closed.

“Come on,” he said stiffly, aware that this was not what these children needed but unsure how exactly to rectify that. “I’ll walk you back to your room.”

And with that, their shared eleventh birthday celebrations ended.

Terribly.


	5. Sicknesses and Spriggans

If Spencer had desired to remain angry with his friend after that day, he found that almost next to impossible to do, because Emily went and did the one thing that guaranteed he had to stay by her side to ensure she was taken care of: she got sick. The first he knew of it was slinking down to breakfast the morning after the disastrous birthday trip and finding no Emily there. No one seemed to notice the lack of his friend, or even seemed to really be paying all that much attention to him at all—except he noticed that the apple he got given for breakfast was twice as big as usual and, when he lifted up his orange juice, there was a couple of pieces of candy there arranged into a smile—so he ate through his breakfast silently, and worried. When he was done, he took his own dishes back into the kitchen, sliding them onto the sink and turning to politely wait for someone to notice him.

It was the cook who looked down and saw him there, her heart hurting a little bit when she saw the little boy in his neat cardigan and trousers and long fringe that didn’t really hide how swollen his eyes were from crying all night. “Hello, love,” she greeted him, putting aside the plans for the gathering that was coming through the house later that afternoon and crouching to study him. Remembering his tantrum yesterday, she asked carefully, “Are you still hungry? We might have some cake here somewhere.”

“No thank you, I’m fine.” Spencer shuffled awkwardly, reminding himself that he was asking for someone else, not himself. “Could I have a tray of breakfast for Emily? She didn’t come down.”

A tray was quickly fetched from the breakfast they’d already made for her, Spencer being sent up with the precariously balanced breakfast as well as an extra slice of cake for himself. Carefully navigating the halls with his goods, he wondered how he was going to apologise for what he’d said to her, even as the feeling that had burned through him yesterday lingered as a chest deep ache that made him feel sore and unhappy. Maybe he’d just never be happy again…

When he knocked on Emily’s door, there was no answer. So he knocked again, and then just let himself in, finding Emily as a lump under her covers that didn’t move when he called her name. Sliding the tray onto the bedside table, he grabbed the wrapped candy they’d given him out from his pocket and clambered up into the bed, lifting the covers and crawling under to search for his friend.

He found her, glaring at him from her hollow under there, the whole place a damp kind of humid heat. Wordlessly, he offered her the candy, which she declined with a shake of her head and a sneeze.

He scuttled backwards from that sneeze. “Gross,” he said, watching her snuffle wetly, eyes watering. “Are you crying?”

“I’m sick,” she muttered thickly, snuffing again. “Go away. You hate me anyway, so go away.”

“I’m sorry I said that. I brought you breakfast to make up for it, and you can have my cake.”

But, instead of thanking him and emerging from her pathogen incubation centre, she just groaned and curled up tighter. “I’ll die if I eat,” she declared, her stomach gurgling dangerously.

Spencer very quickly decided that this was far out of his ballpark, diving out of the bed and going running for any adult that cared.

 

The news filtered through the house slowly in the chaos of the afternoon meeting, Chambers getting back to his office right as two maids hurried past discussing Miss Emily being ill. With a sigh at how complicated and filled with children his life had suddenly gotten, he turned on his heel and hurried to the kitchens to make sure someone had that in hand in the absence of Elizabeth. She was really going to have to hire a new nanny or au pair, he thought. This was untenable. Children took so much _care._

“Oh, don’t worry, Eric,” the cook said cheerfully to him as he queried who was nursing the child. “It’s just a head-cold with a little bit of a fever, I already popped up to check on the muppet. And she’s very well looked after.”

“By _who?”_ asked Chambers.

“The little lad. He’s up there with water and soup and warm compasses fussing away at her, she couldn’t ask for a better carer. We did have to get him a mask though, he was being such a dill about germs.”

How could a child care for another child? Chambers thought irritably, declaring with longsuffering woe that he would simply have to go and check on the child himself, even if only so he could call Elizabeth and keep her updated on her condition. The cook smiled at him, pressing him to take a new bowl of soup up to replace the last one, if it had gone cold, and sending him on his way.

Up he went to where he was told the girl had been moved so her sweaty sheets could be replaced with fresh ones, lifting his hand ready to knock on the almost-closed door of the children’s sitting room before pausing as he heard voices within.

“I _did_ say I was sorry for saying those things…”

“You wouldn’t have said them if you didn’t mean them. I thought we were friends, but friends don’t hate each other… and I’m _not_ horrid.” This was followed by a spate of weak coughing for effect, which quickly morphed into actual coughing that had Chambers wincing with every hoarse bark.

“I’m _sorry_. I really didn’t mean it, I was just really, really upset.”

“Why? We were going to get cake, and Mom always, _always_ cancels things, I don’t know why you were surprised. That’s what Moms _do_.”

“Not mine…”

There was a loud kind of quiet, Emily’s rattling breathing loud enough that Chambers could hear it from the hall, even as he lay his hand against the wood of the door instead of knocking, listening without really knowing why he was doing so.

“Do you really want to go home? Even though you’ll never see me again if you do?” Sniffling started up, Chambers’ eyes watering in sympathy from how snotty it sounded. “If you do, I’ll tell Mom she has to send you back. I’ll miss you, but I’ll still tell her…”

“I don’t know, maybe. I just… I thought if we had _one_ day that was exciting and just like being home, maybe I could write to Mom about it and she’d… reply. I just want her to reply to me… and we love Halloween so much, I don’t know what it’s going to be like without her. Well, I guess I do, I guess it won’t be anything, because they don’t _do_ Halloween here.”

Ah, thought Chambers, as it clicked. _That_ was why he’d yelled. And that was something he understood: missing people who were no longer there was something anyone with a heart could understand.

With a niggling thought in mind, he tapped at the door and entered, finding Emily bundled in blankets on the sofa and Spencer sitting as far away from her as possible. “Soup,” he informed them. “And you _will_ eat it, Miss Emily. Being sick is no excuse for disobedience.”

And even though he annoyed them terribly by fussing at them because that was his job, a small part of him wondered: maybe he could fix this?

 

Emily took a week to recover, in which time Spencer’s tantrum was forgotten by all but Spencer himself, Halloween passing by without comment. Guy Fawkes Day approached, but Spencer couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for it in the wake of the disappointing Halloween. It wasn’t really the same…

And his mom still hadn’t replied.

There was one other person in the house who hadn’t forgotten Spencer’s outburst, and that person had been see-sawing back and forth all week over whether or not he should do the thing he was thinking of doing. In all likelihood, it would backfire spectacularly—he sorely doubted his ability to keep two eleven-year-olds entertained, nor be responsible solely for the care of them out in public, and besides what if he was needed _here_. Elizabeth still wasn’t home from Northern Ireland, nor would she be anytime soon, so this decision was entirely up to… Chambers.

In the end, he decided to be brave. How terrible could a single day trip be?

“I have decided to take you both out,” he declared over breakfast one morning, peering down at the two startled faces looking up at him. “Go and get dressed— _nicely_ —and be back down and waiting within the hour, please.”

“To the toy shop?” Emily exclaimed, launching out of her seat and leaving her apple sitting there untouched. “Can I get a—”

“Not to the toy shop,” Chambers said quickly. “No, my itinerary is rather more… themed.” And with that, he risked a wink at Spencer, who simply looked confused. “Now, go get ready. I cannot abide tardiness.”

 

In the car, the children quizzed him. Or, rather, Emily quizzed him and Spencer sat politely with his rescued notebook beside him and Balthy on his lap. It was a grey and drizzly day, unsurprisingly, and Spencer couldn’t for the life of him figure out where they were going through the tinted windows of the town-car, even with the use of his extensive memory of a London roadmap. And all Chambers would tell them was that they were going first to a park and wouldn’t say a single word more about the subject.

He wasn’t lying. They left the car and walked sedately along a shaded park, the rain lessening enough that Chambers didn’t pop the umbrella he was holding over them. In such gloomy weather, the shadows were long, the path deserted, and both children were very puzzled about why their day out had turned into a nature walk. To kill time, Spencer named the trees they walked past for Emily’s amusement: oak, ash, birch, hawthorn, cherry, apple, holly, rowan, sycamore, yew…

“Ahem,” said Chambers, slowing and peering into the trees lining what looked like the beginning of a disused train platform. “Did you see that?”

They both looked too. Nothing was there, except some fat birds flittering around and a chubby squirrel that Emily giggled at. Just trees and trees and more trees and—

“Ooooh,” Chambers said softly, crouching down. “Quick, get down… before it sees you.”

They both dropped, shuffling behind him with no care for Spencer’s trouser knees or Emily’s dress. Pressed together and peering around his neat waistcoat, they couldn’t _see_ anything, but he lifted a finger to his lips and made a soft shhh noise.

“Do you know where we are?” he whispered.

They shook their heads, eyes wide and very much paying attention now.

“This is the Parkland Walk, and see that?” He pointed to the platforms they could just see poking through the trees, the wood old and weathered. “That’s Crouch End. Do you know what walks these paths?”

They both shook their heads harder, Spencer gleeful, Emily wary.

“Well,” murmured Chambers, leaning close so they could listen to his soft voice. “Some say… there’s a _beast_ that walks these paths. A ghostly creature, half-man, half… _goat_.”

“Half-goat, oh my gosh,” Emily breathed.

“Gosh indeed. Children around here know better than to come here after dark, knowing that they may hear the trip trap of his monstrous goat feet coming towards them in the gloom.”

Spencer peeped excitedly, looking around with desperate hope that he would see the beast looking at them from the bushes.

Chambers watched him with a small, hidden smile. “Don’t worry,” he reassured them, seeing Emily’s huge eyes. “It doesn’t come out during the day—it’s afraid of the spriggan.”

“The _what?”_ asked Emily.

“Tree-men, right?” Spencer said breathlessly. “Like pixies for trees.”

“Very much so. Now, if you both sneak behind me… very quietly, like that—Emily, pick up your hem, don’t let it drag in the dirt—you might catch a glimpse of a spriggan—but don’t let it see you.”

They followed… very… carefully, peering through the grove of trees Chambers pointed through. Neither expected to see anything, not really—but to their absolute shock, they _did_. A bridge overhung the path, leaves and vines growing wild around it: perched in the corner of the brick bridge, as though it was bursting out of the brick like a great green spider, was a creature with wide, empty eyes and spindly fingers. Neither child got a good look at it because, as soon as they saw the creature’s empty eyes seemingly turn towards them from the shadows of the bridge, they fled with twin squeals of excited horror.

Chuckling to himself, Chambers stood, brushing himself down before sedately strolling after the sounds of fleeing footsteps. As he went, he paused only once, with a tip of his hat to the motionless statue of the spriggan behind him.

“How about lunch?” he asked the breathless children when he found them hugging each other at the end of the path, acting as though nothing terrifying in the world had ever passed his eyes. Panting and giggling nervously, the children both nodded and followed, as obedient as any person could want their charges to be.

 

Lunch was at a surprising place for the children. They stopped at a tiny hole-in-the-wall store that sold fish and chips wrapped in paper, Spencer carrying it with his arms wrapped right around it and Balthy tucked safely into his shirt. They followed Chambers down a narrow street and into a corner bar—called a pub, Emily corrected Spencer—Chambers directing them to a booth at the side while he vanished to the bar to get them some fancy lemonades. While Emily unwrapped the chips, licking vinegar from her fingers with relish, Spencer picked up the menu sat on their table and read it curiously, finding a further information pamphlet within.

“Emily,” he gasped, looking up from the pamphlet. “Do you know what this place is _called_?”

“Nope,” Emily said around a mouthful of chips, taking the chance while they were mostly unsupervised to be crass. “What?”

“The _Jack the Ripper_. He’s a serial killer—look. And it says two of the ladies he killed used to come here.”

“Whoa,” was Emily’s stunned response, taking the pamphlet and staring at the gory illustration within. “Oh man, this says there’s stuff here about him—can we see?”

“This says there might be ghosts.” Spencer was far too distracted by the prospect of ghosts to focus on his food, wiggling around his seat and staring intently at the other patrons. “Did… did they ever catch him?”

There was silence as they looked at each other.

“What if he’s _still here?”_ Emily whispered.

When Chambers returned with a pint, the children’s lemonades, and a packet of peanuts, it was to the chips barely touched and the two heads bowed together, whispering intently. Spencer’s notebook was open in his lap and he was writing as fast as he possibly could, not even looking up when Chambers offered them the peanuts.

“Can we stop by a bookstore?” Emily asked suddenly, her head popping up. “We want to get a book, please.”

“Please,” added Spencer hopefully.

Smugly, Chambers smiled. “Of course. But we have two more places to go as well.”

 

This was proving to be a _brilliant_ idea, and Chambers—if he was the sort—felt rather much like patting himself on the back for it. All things spooky seemed to have gone down well with the children, despite his initial worries that it might be a little too confronting for them, and while Emily seemed a little more disturbed than Spencer did, he was sure she’d be fine. There was simply no way this could backfire now, not now that Spencer’s notebook was filling so quickly with all kinds of things that he could write to his mother about. As they drove to their next destination, a stack of brand new books piled between the two children that they’d picked out at the store— _Walking Haunted London_ could just be seen by Emily, Spencer’s hand resting on _Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook_ , and the rest of the titles obscured.

“Now, we can’t go in, I’m afraid, but I think there’s something here that Emily will like very much,” Chambers informed them as their car drew up and deposited them as close to the intimidating walls of the Tower of London as it could. The children were silent and awed as they approached, skirting the path across to a great parkway where people strolled and guards in red and black stood without moving. “Did you know that there used to be a Royal Menagerie here? Visitors were admitted, but only if they paid either half-pence or gave up a dog or cat to be fed to the lions.”

“Gross!” Emily yelled, bouncing in place with excitement at the idea. “Could I have given them Spencer to be fed to the lions?”

This earned her a haughty look from Spencer, and a wry, “The point was to _feed_ the lions, not give them bones to pick their teeth,” from Chambers.

“All those animals eventually got moved to the London Zoo, however there are still some animals here today—very important ones. And Emily, I think you’ll like these very much—they’re not raptors, but they’re far _far_ better.”

Curiously, the children followed until they found what they were looking for: a man in a strange black and red uniform strolling along the path with, of all things, a great black bird on his arm.

“A crow!” Emily squeaked, staring in fascination at the bird’s ridiculous crest of feathers, all spiked up and pointy like the girls in the fashion magazines.

“A raven,” corrected Spencer quickly, who’d read a book on this. “That man’s a Yeoman Warder, isn’t he? He takes care of the ravens, who are _important.”_

“That’s right. If the ravens are absent from the Tower, it’s believed that the kingdom may fall. Now, I’m acquainted with this fellow—would you like me to ask if you can see the raven closer? And if you ask kindly… he might even tell you about the ghosts.”

“Oh!” both children gasped. “Please!”

Yes, thought Chambers smugly. This was a brilliant idea.

 

The drive home was blissful for both Spencer and Emily, their new books open on their laps and Balthy’s new friend, a stuffed raven that Emily had declared the most Valiant of _all_ birds ever when she’d found it on a shelf at Hamleys—their final surprise stop—perched beside his hare buddy, spiky feather hat and all. It had been an exhausting, thrilling day—and Spencer couldn’t _wait_ to write to his mom about it.

“How did you know all the best places to go to?” he asked Chambers.

“Are you a ghost-hunter?” added Emily, petting her stuffed raven as she continued trying to think of names for him. Spencer hadn’t wanted anything at the toy shop, too excited about his books, which had surprised Chambers, who’d been expecting a far larger bill than a singular stuffed raven.

Chambers laughed. “Ah, no. I’m a bit of an enthusiast of creepy things, I suppose. Hardly the time for it anymore, but I was _very_ keen on hauntings and all kinds of spooks as a child and teenager. Even now, I collect horror VHSs, not that I get the time to watch them.”

“Oooh I _love_ horror movies,” said Spencer wistfully.

“So do I,” lied Emily, who was most definitely going to have nightmares after today, but was sure that it was worth it anyway.

Chambers paused. He’d taken the whole day off for this trip, technically, since none of his official duties involved daytrips around London, and the cook was going to stay the night with the children in his place, but…

Well. He could give her a night off.

“One last stop,” he asked the driver, giving the man the address of his home, not far from Winfield.

 

While Mr Chambers vanished to find suitable movies for what he’d informed them would be a _traditional_ movie night—popcorn and candy and all—Emily and Spencer lingered in the front hall of his home, looking around. It didn’t look much like the sort of home they’d have figured a man like Mr Chambers would live in. It was narrow and dusty, the hall dark and with barely enough room for two people to walk side by side. In fact, as Emily suddenly remembered all the ghost stories they’d heard this day, it was kind of spooky, and she looked up the stairs into the gloom up there and shivered a bit.

“This is the kind of house Jack the Ripper would have lived in, I think,” she whispered to Spencer, who nodded, light on his glasses obscuring his eyes. “Or his ghost. Walking around and banging on all the walls just to—”

There was a thump upstairs, both of their heads jerking up to stare at the darkness of the second floor.

“Uh,” said Spencer. Emily inched closer to him, her hand finding his, and they clung to each other.

There came a groan from up there, low and deep. Another bang, and a sliding sound like something was coming towards them, through the dusty shadows, dragging itself across the carpet to the stairs where they stood below—outlined by the door and so obvious it wouldn’t possibly be able to miss them… and even as they strained their ear to listen, they could hear the great wheeze of something terrible _breathing_ up there!

Emily opened her mouth to yell, and Chambers appeared from the living room with a bag that rattled and a bright smile.

“Right, here we go,” he declared. “On our way then—home to our movie night!” It was, he realised, something he was actually looking forward to quite a lot.

And, despite the children looking back up at the staircase on their way out, nothing could be seen up there.


	6. A Divertive Bid for Fame

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Emily began.

“Oh no,” said Spencer, who knew his friend well enough by now to know that that was never a promising thing.

“No, don’t be dumb, it’s a good thing. You know the book on spooky houses you’ve been reading me?”

“Yeeees…” Spencer trailed the word, tapping his pen on his homework. Emily _should_ be doing hers too, but she, of course, was not. “What about it?”

“Well, I bet Mr Chambers’s house is haunted just like that one—don’t you?”

Spencer did not. “No,” he said. “I do not and I think you should do your homework and not do any more thinking for at least a couple of days.” A couple of days, he was sure, was enough for his distractible friend to move on to something more interesting than their poor steward’s probably haunted home.

But Emily beamed at him. “And I found a _map_ ,” she announced proudly, procuring said map from the inside of her math homework. “It used to be part of the grounds here, but they sold it because of taxes—”

“Taxes?” Spencer asked. “What about them?”

“Well, they had them, I guess. And they didn’t want them, so they gave the house away and then they didn’t have them anymore.” Neither of them really knew what taxes were, but that sounded about right, so they moved on from it without further questions. “Anyway, if we cut across the grounds like this, and hop this little blue line—”

“That’s a river…”

Emily ignored him. “It’s only a _small_ blue line, it’ll be fine. We can go right to his house and look about for signs of ghosts.”

Spencer was not at all convinced that this plan was a ‘good thing’. Actually, it very much sounded like a _terrible_ thing, filled with going someplace they weren’t allowed, probably falling in a river, and then _trespassing._ All things he knew Emily would think were very cool, but that he knew might get them sent to prison for life—and he’d do awful in prison.

“We’re not going to break in,” Emily reassured him, maybe seeing his worries in his expression. “We’re just going to look. If there are ghosts there, they’ll try to scare us.”

“But ghosts only come out at night,” said Spencer sensibly, finding the one—or so he thought—fatal flaw in this plan.

Emily just smiled.

“Oh no,” said Spencer again.

 

At least it wasn’t raining. That was a small comfort to Spencer as they waited until after dinner and made their escape out through Emily’s window. Across the damp lawns they marched, school backpacks over their thick, dark coats and faces wrapped tight in scarves. Spencer had a flashlight in hand, ready to switch it on as soon as they were out of sight of the wide windows behind them, their waterproof boots squeaking on the grass as they went. It was cold, their breath making the scarves around their mouths damp with condensation, but Emily was skipping with excitement. Spencer couldn’t help but skip a little too, as the clouds broke overhead and a watery, autumn moon peeked out at them, the stars around it barely visible. Whether or not they _should_ be doing this, they _were,_ and it was the most awfully exciting thing.

“We’ve just got to go this way, through that corpse of trees,” said Emily, pointing her mittened hand ahead.

“Copse,” corrected Spencer, clicking on the flashlight and shining it at the trees, a little dismayed by how thin the beam was out here in the dark. Despite being in central London, the world was quiet, the thick woods and parklands around them keeping the sounds of the city away.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said—never mind. Did you bring Blackheart?” Spencer could see beady raven eyes poking out from the back of Emily’s coat, watching him through her dark hair as he trudged behind her. It was unnerving, like Emily was growing a beak out of the back of her neck, and he shivered.

“Of course. And his name isn’t Blackheart anymore. It’s Nightvale.”

“Oh. Cool.” They walked in silence, Spencer looking up at the moon and wondering if he’d see an owl, Emily already tempted to break into the packet of biscuits she’d taken from the pantry despite only just having eaten dinner. What had seemed like a very short walk on the map turned out to not be a very short walk at all, and both of them were puffing before very long. Their thoughts turned to whether they’d be found out, Emily sure they wouldn’t, Spencer already planning how to decorate his prison cell and wondering if they allowed hares. To distract from that thought, Spencer spoke: “What do we do if we actually see a ghost?”

The logical part of him, of course, figured that there wasn’t _actually_ ghosts anyway and doubted they would: the rest of him kind of hoped that they would see one after all.

“I don’t know,” said Emily, who hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Run?”

“Hmm.” Spencer thought about that, slowing down as he saw something move in the trees ahead. “I don’t think we run. We should document it, for science. We’d probably be famous after that, you know, like the girls from the Cottingley Fairies.” This was something he’d actually read about and knew quite a bit on, enough to be sceptical of the whole thing but very impressed with the ingeniousness of the scheme. Being a small genius who knew things like particle physics—but not taxes—didn’t stop him from being eleven and very sure that fame was only a successful ghost haunting away.

“Well, we don’t have a camera, but we could always come back with one if we find out that—what’s _that?”_ Emily’s shock was genuine, as was Spencer’s: the _that_ that Emily was so surprised by was a womanly scream that sounded out from the trees where Spencer had been looking, low and snarly and terrified, like she was being hurt horribly.

“I think it’s a fox.” Spencer was pretty sure it was a fox, but… the scream came again, worse this time, and _closer._ “Maybe we should go back…”

Emily had a better idea. She slid her backpack off her back and fumbled through it, emerging with the packet of biscuits and popping it open. After all, hares and foxes weren’t that different, and Balthy had always stopped playing around when there were biscuits to be had. She took three biscuits out, lobbing one hard into the trees, the second a bit closer, and holding the third.

“Get down,” she whispered to Spencer, who did as he was told. They lay there in patient silence as the moon drifted lazily overhead, ghosts very much out of mind now that a promise of foxes had been put forward. Elizabeth, had she been aware of where they were and what they were doing, would have been very impressed and likely disbelieving of just how enduring they were.

Their patience was rewarded. On a quest for biscuits, a large dog fox slunk out of the bushes, sniffing carefully at the grass and ignoring the not-as-quiet-as-they-thought-they-were children gasping at the sight of him. With his winter coat fully in, he was a fluffy, bright red, handsome animal, pausing in the moonlight and looking right at them with his sleek black stockings gleaming and the white tip of his bushy tail held out proudly behind him.

Emily loved him immediately. Spencer was fascinated by just how calm he was despite them being right there.

“Throw a biscuit closer,” he whispered. Emily did so, both of them squeaking a little as the fox trotted over confidently, his teeth visible as sharp white flickers in the darkness as he crunched away. Their delight faded fast as the fox finished his biscuit, barely one Emily-length away from them—as Emily was still slightly taller than Spencer and had announced that she would always be taller—and seemed to be studying them.

“Do you think I can pet him?” Emily wondered out loud as the fox noticed the packet of biscuits in her hand, his tongue flicking out over his lips.

“No. Uh. Emily… I think he wants the biscuits.” Spencer wiggled back a little as the dog fox stuck his snout closer, growling softly. “Maybe you should give him the rest.”

“What? No. I’m not getting mugged by a _fox_. If he wants a biscuit, he can _ask.”_

Spencer didn’t think the fox was going to ask. In fact, it looked very much like the fox was going to _bite_. With a yell that echoed, he launched to his feet—suddenly much taller than the startled fox with his face well out of biting range, the fox bolting back and vanishing into the woods.

“Aw,” said Emily, disappointed that their friend had left them. “He probably would have only bitten a little. Although, you probably just stopped me from getting rabies, so thanks I guess.”

“Rabies is only found in the wild bat population in the UK,” Spencer pointed out, taking his glasses off and shaking dew from them. “Most island nations are rabies-free. Come on, it’s getting colder. I want to be home before it rains.”

Focused once more, they stood and walked into the thin trees together, sure that they were definitely going to make it.

 

They were definitely not going to make it.

Spencer was yawning and thinking of his bed; Emily was out of biscuits and thinking of her grumbling stomach. And the forest just kept going on and on and on—only because, and they didn’t realise this just then, they were actually going the wrong way—even though the map hadn’t said it would be _this_ long.

Spencer, about to complain about lying maps, was distracted once again by movement, this time overhead. Stopping and craning his neck right back, he flapped his hand at Emily telling her to be quiet. She did, folding her arms and staring at him, hair poking out weirdly where Nightvale was wiggling loose.

“What’d you see?” she whispered, right before the trees overhead whispered back.

“Whooo?” the trees asked them.

They stared, Emily’s mouth half-open.

“Ghost?” Emily—hopefully—asked.

“Owl,” Spencer—correctly—identified.

“Whoo who,” said the trees, almost sounding insulted.

They looked at each other, thoughts of ghosts fleeing. Owls would be _so_ much cooler to see. “If we sit down quietly, we might spot it?” Emily whispered.

And so they did.

 

They not only saw their owl, but also a fieldmouse that it rustled out of hiding. After that, all thoughts of getting to Chambers’s house and snooping around were long gone, the two of them fascinated with what else they could find in these trees. They decided to continue sitting quietly, to see what would pop out and say hello. And the night wore on without them finding anything else, until Emily startled awake a little and poked Spencer, pointing to where something was trundling across the ground.

“A _hedgehog_ ,” she said gleefully. “We should just go home. _Nothing_ will top this, not even a ghost.”

Despite her surety, she was wrong. As they walked home together, cold but overexcited about how many cool animals were living _right in their backyard_ where they could pretty much go and see them at any point, their owl from before swooped overhead. They were both startled, neither having heard the hunting bird coming. But it wasn’t them the barn owl was after, silent wings lifting it up and away as it realised its prey was a little too large for it—and the lucky hare the owl had considered eating bolted in front of the two stunned children, leaping into the undergrowth in a long, lean line of brown and tan and long ears.

Spencer had never _seen_ a hare so big or strong looking, at least three times the size Balthy had been and impossibly long. He stared at Emily, who stared back.

“I think,” Emily said slowly, as a new idea formed. “We should come back in the morning with more biscuits.”

And, for once, Spencer agreed.


	7. Where the Ball Drops

A week before Christmas, Elizabeth told them to pack their bags for a long stay somewhere. Mystified, they did—Spencer once and Emily twice, after Elizabeth wisely double-checked what she’d packed and informed her that, no, she couldn’t just take every sock she owned and nothing else. Judging from the exasperated lecturing Spencer could hear from up the hall, the second time hadn’t gone very well either—and the third was pawned off to a maid to handle, Emily being released into his custody for the duration.

“So where do you think we’re going?” Emily asked, sitting on his bed and swinging her legs back and forth and back and forth as she watched him refold his clothes to get them just right. He was aiming for the best ratio of books to clothes that he could feasibly get, micromanaging each and every item in order to achieve this. “I vote Disneyland.”

“Disneyland costs a lot of money,” Spencer said absently, checking his sock index. Even in transit, it persisted.

“We live in a _mansion_ , Spencer.”

He paused. Oh. Yeah.“Well, I don’t think it’s Disneyland,” he rebuffed, feeling defensive. “It’s Christmas. It has to be something Christmassy.”

“Hmm.” She hummed and kicked her feet some more. “Maybe the North Pole.”

Spencer didn’t really believe it was the North Pole, but he _hoped_. “That would be cool,” he admitted, pausing as he thought over just how cool that would actually be.

“And then we can see a _penguin_ ,” Emily added excitedly.

Spencer sighed and walked over to his bookshelf, swapping out his already packed _Fundamentally Physics_ for _The Complete Encyclopedia of Animals of the World_. One day Emily would listen when he explained where penguins were and where they simply _weren’t._ One day.

And while she was a captive audience on a plane going somewhere seemed the best time of any to start.

 

Of course, Spencer clicked as soon as they walked into the London airport and to the gate labelled ‘connecting flight to Las Vegas’. Emily took a tiny beat longer before turning to Spencer with her grin wide and hands flying up in an excited flail of realisation.

“Your mom!” she gasped. “Are we going to see your mom!?”

And Elizabeth just smiled, patting him very carefully on the shoulder as he tried to hide how overwhelmed he was.

 

Diana wasn’t waiting at the other end of the eleven-hour flight, which Elizabeth assured him was by design. To Spencer’s horror, it turned out that they weren’t going immediately there—first they had to go to the hotel and then they had to _sleep_ to wait for visiting hours and then the drive to the place his mom was staying. It was all too far away and he couldn’t help but whine a little as he slouched after Elizabeth to the car waiting for them, his suitcase bumping at his side and Balthy tied to his belt so he didn’t lose her. Emily had done the same with the newly named Blackavar, his raven-y wings flapping in the breeze.

“Now, we’re only in Vegas for two days,” Elizabeth told them as they hopped into the car and buckled in, Spencer still sulking at how slow and frustrating time was moving. “After that, we’re taking Diana home to the house in Seattle to spend Christmas with us there. I expect you both to be on your absolute _best_ behaviour, do you understand?”

Spencer nodded furiously. Emily went to roll her eyes, but he glared at her. _Nothing_ could ruin this. Already he was buzzing, because the sights around him he knew. Like stepping into a scene from a favourite, barely-remembered movie—he recognised, on some deep, fundamental level, the smells and the sounds and the sights of Las Vegas as intimately as he recognised his own reflection.

“Can we have our own suite at the hotel?” Emily asked.

Elizabeth, without missing a beat, threw back, “When you’re sixteen,” and Spencer watched as Emily paused and visibly committed that promise to memory, a cat-like smile appearing on her mouth.

He sighed.

Emily on the other hand was having a wonderful time. She pressed her nose against the window and watched Las Vegas swoop past, so bright and loud and wild that she felt giddy, like she’d have liked nothing else but to slip from this car and get lost in the night. When she was older, she decided, she’d definitely love to see everywhere there was to see in the night time. Day made things garish and boring—night, even like now when it was barely dusk and lights were just coming on, was vivid and exciting and _dangerous_. Ever since they’d snuck out that night, she’d been burning to do so again, having learned that there was a quiet loneliness under the moon and the stars that she _adored_ , like there was no one else in the world alive but her and Spencer and the animals surrounding. She wondered what kind of a job she could have that would let her stay up all night and see the morning come, before going to bed and sleeping the dreary day away.

Spencer, she could tell, was feeling dreary. He was doing that thing he did where he fidgeted and fretted, fingers petting Balthy feverishly in between staring out the window like he was remembering something wonderful. She supposed that maybe he was missing his mom and excited to see her again. It made things harder to wait for when they were just that _little_ bit out of reach. Like right now, she was distantly excited about Christmas but far more excited about going home to her favourite tree, because one was a whole ginormous week away and the other was so soon she could already feel the bark under her palms. Despite the signs of Christmas on every shopfront, casino foyer, and street corner that they passed, the tree was far more in reach.

She snuck another look at Spencer, seeing him take two long breaths and hold them, like he was trying to calm himself down. Maybe she should distract him from the waiting.

“Hey Spencer,” she whispered to him, so her mom couldn’t hear them talking. Their stories were for them, not for sneaky ears listening in. “Want me to tell you about the time that Fiver was stolen by the raven?”

“Ooo, yes please,” said Spencer, his hands already stilling.

 

After a night in a hotel that was ridiculously exciting, both of them tearing around as much as Elizabeth would let them in order to shake off all the jitters from the plane, it was finally here. It was _today_.

He was standing outside the building where his mom lived.

It was different than he’d expected, as he twiddled and plucked at his clothes, hoping he looked well-presented for her and also surprised that the walls were so small and the gardens so open. He didn’t know why, but he’d expected wrought iron fences and grey bushes and no grass—like a place from one of the gothic novels Emily had started reading recently and liked to read the ‘romantic’ bits out to him, romantic in this case meaning that someone was throwing themselves out a turret window for the one they loved, which he found somewhat close-ended. You couldn’t love someone if you were a pancake, after all.

But there were no turrets here, or mopey Victorian ladies. Just nice gardens with roses and tiny picket fencing and paths made of gravel and lots of trees that people would usually sit under, if it wasn’t so cold out. The building was large but nice, Christmas decorations up all over and the front doors standing open, like it wanted him to come in and say hello.

For the first time, he truly began to believe that maybe he’d done the right thing in going to London, if this was the lovely place that his mom was now. She wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t gone, even if he hated it there—she’d be in some small terrible place trying to still be his mom instead of trying to get better.

“Whoa, I bet this place has ghosts,” Emily exclaimed next to him, derailing his train of thought. He hugged his notebook close, reached back into the car for Balthy, and nodded—there likely were. But that wasn’t important right now.

“Is my hair neat?” he asked her, standing rigid as she ran a hand over it to get it lined flat. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go. Wait. Your skirt is crooked.”

Emily fixed it with a quick hand and a sigh, glancing over to her mom finishing a call from the car phone. “Don’t worry, Spence,” she reassured him. “She’s your mom. She doesn’t care if you’re a mess.”

Spencer hoped that that was true.

 

They walked up the hall with Spencer’s hands curled tight in his pockets, and Emily’s hand tight around his arm. Backs straight, eyes forward. Nervous, but refusing to show it, as their shiny shoes tapped in unison on the polished floor. Following Elizabeth without looking around, despite their natural curiosity, because there was only one destination they were interested in reaching right now.

And here it was.

A doctor led them into the room, wide and airy with books _everywhere_. Spencer, first, looked at the books in wonder and hoped he’d have so many one day.

Then he looked at her.

“My baby,” Diana said, holding her hands out for him to leap into. “You’ve come home to me. And so _big_ and dressed like a little man, look at you!”

But he heard nothing she said, because he’d already thrown himself into her waiting arms, finding nothing different about her embrace as though he’d never really left home at all.

 

Over the next blissful two days, Spencer and Diana talked of a lot of things. Emily, who felt a little left out standing on the sidelines waiting for her friend to notice her while he was so engrossed with his mom and telling her everything that had happened to him since he’d seen her last, did nothing but listen and wonder and notice, for the first time really, that this wasn’t something she’d ever had with her mom before. They talked about school, with Diana taking a fierce interest in everything they were learning, and they talked about the new home, Diana telling them not to annoy the staff in case they were ever in need of a friend. Emily helped Spencer show off all the language he’d been learning, having a slow-paced—for his sake—conversation in French while Diana beamed proudly and gestured for people to take notice of her clever son. Through the notebook they pored, with Spencer reading out all the adventures they’d had with ghosts and murderers and spriggans and ravens.

But, when Diana asked Spencer if he was liking London and his home there at Winfield House, he did a very surprising thing, something that Emily wasn’t sure she’d ever really seen him do before. At least, not so blatantly.

He lied.

“I love it there, Mom,” he said with a smile that was more genuine than his words. Emily narrowed her eyes, seeing Elizabeth and Diana smile as though it had all worked out just fine, just as planned. “I’m really happy I decided to go—I’m learning so much and I love everyone there.”

Huh, thought Emily. She lied sometimes—sometimes a lot—but she suspected that Spencer was lying for a different reason than just seeing if he could get away with it, which was what she tried. Puzzled, she didn’t bring it up, deciding to ask him later when no one was listening.

“You’re coming home with us, aren’t you?” Spencer asked Diana hopefully this morning, as Diana examined Blackavar and declared him the most handsome raven ever. “For Christmas?”

“Honey, of course I am,” Diana promised. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

 

That was a wonderful Christmas. From Las Vegas, they packed up the car and drove home to Seattle. With Diana in the car, Emily found that Elizabeth was different—less brisk, less businesslike. She _drove_ , which Emily rarely saw her do when time in a car could be used more productively with a driver, and Diana talked her into stopping often to “take in the sights, Elizabeth, we’re in a beautiful world!”

And they were in a beautiful world. Like it knew they were coming home, the skies were promising snow at some point over the week, but, for now, thin snippets of grey sky could be seen among the clouds. As they drove, Emily watched across farmlands and fields as beams of sunlight kept breaking through, lighting up the ground below in the shape of the break in the clouds. She wondered what the animals in that beam thought of their luck, and if they believed that the sun shone so brightly solely for them.

They stopped for snacks that were far too sugary and sweet, Diana winking as she bought them for them, and stopped for no reason than because there was a cow nearby and Diana wanted to see if it would come say hello to them. Shoeless and with the wind whipping at her dress, Emily clung onto the wire fence with her toes and reached both hands to the cow’s curious muzzle, feeling safe and strangely warm with Diana’s hands around her waist holding her in place. Spencer bounced around for his own turn, giggling like a child—which Emily realised she very rarely heard him do anymore—when the cow obliged and mouthed at his open hands.

“Oh no, germs,” he was giggling, laughing despite his horror because of the tickly mouth.

“There are worse things than some germs in this world, my boy,” Diana reassured him.

And they drove and they drove and they drove until they reached their destination: the Sometimes Homes, home again.

 

Their tree was just the same, although there was a small hiccup where they both found that their memories of the distance between the well-remembered branches was for some reason off. Neither of them could puzzle it out and they quickly put it aside as some quirk of memory, of course forgetting that time changes things, children most especially. The view across the Sparkling Ravenway was just as wonderful as always, although Emily frowned to see that the horses were gone, replaced with sweeping lawns and a brand-new boatshed.

They didn’t fit in their tunnels anymore and couldn’t really try anyway, with the hedges having reclaimed that space while they’d been absent and the ground soggy below. Their gardener still worked there, shaking his head to see them and how they were much the same as they’d always been, hare at their side and all—even if the hare was a lot less rowdier than the ones he was used to.

They found that Balthy’s descendants—the real Balthy, not the one Spencer carried with him—were doing just fine, even spotting the white-tail of one’s butt hiding in the warm confines of Balthy’s old house. With solemn hearts, they walked together to the grave where their brave hare rested, sitting by the rock on a blanket Spencer had brought with him to save their knees as they told her about everything they’d seen in the eternity since she’d died. The stuffed Balthy stood guard over them, until a voice hollered out their names.

Up their heads popped, staring up the driveway to the familiar figure pedalling wildly towards them, leaping from his bike and letting it go crashing into a hedge as he ran the rest of the way, still waving.

Spencer recognised him first.

“Ethan!”

 

Ethan hadn’t changed much at all and it was allowed that he would be able to spend Christmas afternoon with them, after Emily and Elizabeth returned from church and after gifts were given. Christmas Eve passed slowly in a frenzy of waiting, Emily sneaking into the bedroom Spencer was sleeping in—they hadn’t been allowed to sleep in their lake house anymore, with it closed up and the furniture packed away now they were gone—and snuggling down into the warm covers with him. He had the curtains pulled back so he could look out across the dark skies outside, strangely clear despite the weather forecaster on the radio informing them that snow would soon be coming.

They lay there together, breathing slowly as they watched the moon skate across that sky, wondering if they’d see a flash of movement across the face of it or hear the sound of bells.

This would really be the last year that they’d stay awake thinking of Santa, although they didn’t know this yet. All they knew now was that there was still _something_ magic about Christmas, the same as them searching for ghosts despite not really believing in them.

“What are you thinking about?” Emily asked Spencer, wiggling around in the bed until she could use him as a pillow, her head on her chest and still watching the stars. She too hoped to see something magic, although she’d have been content to see snow instead.

“The stars look different here, even though they’re not, really.” Spencer sighed, Emily rising and falling with the movement of his chest, and reached out his hand to pat both Balthy and Blackavar. “Maybe it’s a matter of perspective.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “I don’t get you sometimes,” she told him. “You’re so odd.”

He just smiled, a small huff of laughter escaping from his mouth, and went back to thinking big thoughts, of which he was doing a lot more lately. He guessed it was a part of growing up, and wondered if Emily thought them too or if she was too focused on things that were real and around them.

“Why’d you lie to your mom?” she asked suddenly, confirming his suspicion that she thought big things too, sometimes, even if she didn’t let people see. “When she asked if you were happy in London? You’re not happy there. You want to come home—why not tell her?”

“You saw the place she was at. It’s really nice there and I think… well, she’s a lot better now, isn’t she?”

She really was. Diana had been wonderful this entire holiday, just like she’d used to be before his dad and her getting sick and that horrible last year. If that was what a couple of months at that place could do, imagine a _year_ , or maybe even _two_. She might even get so better that him and Emily could go live with _her_ , seeing as Elizabeth was so busy all the time and would probably like the rest from motherhood.

“I mean, I guess… but don’t you want to be happy too? Will you be happy when we go back?”

Spencer thought about that, carefully shifting around so he could work the blankets more firmly around them despite Emily’s awkward angle on his chest. He saw it first; despite the clear sky outside, something white brushed the window.

“You know,” he said softly, watching another and then another dance across the pane, rewarding his belief, “I think maybe I can be.”

 

Christmas morning, Diana gave Spencer a box of all of her letters, citing that she’d been worried that they’d be lost across the ocean if she was to mail them in the traditional manner. There was one in there for every day he’d been gone, pages and pages and pages of them. He held the box close and failed to find the words to tell her how important this was to him: she knew anyway.

And no more needs to be said about that, because everything important was glimpsed in that moment.

 

Nor do we need to discuss the goodbyes that came next; just know that they happened and that they were as terrible as could be imagined, the plane ride away from Vegas filled with every kind of broken heart.

Instead, there was New Years.

 

They didn’t go home immediately. Instead, they flew to New York on the eve of New Year’s, Elizabeth taking them around to all the sights in such a blur of people and faces and places and things that even Spencer’s memory would struggle to recall everything he saw this day.

Except for one moment.

Their hotel was in a high-rise, sweeping up into the gloomy sky. Snow was here, drifting lazily through the air to settle as grey flurries kicked by hurried feet down below. But up here, in the sky, it was beautiful, as was what came next.

Huddled on the balcony, wrapped in every possible blanket and with warm mugs of cocoa in their hands, Spencer and Emily forgot that they were sad because of goodbyes and forgot that they didn’t really feel like they were _going_ home, but rather, _leaving_ it. They forgot all of this and stared across the sky in wonder as 1981 became 1982 in a spectacular show of fireworks lighting up the city before them. On the TV behind them, just visible through the glass with Elizabeth leaning on the couch and watching it, a glass of wine in hand, the balls were dropping: the year was over.

“Look,” Emily said suddenly, in a pause between booms, standing up and shedding blankets in order to hang over the rail and point across the street. Over there, when Spencer inched over, there was another building of balconies, more people watching the fireworks, and even more crowded onto the roof and cheering up at the sky. But he knew immediately who Emily was pointing at: the little girl atop her father’s shoulders was vivid in a thick, neon parka of pink and yellow, her dad holding her carefully in the air. “My dad never did that for me.”

“Neither did mine,” Spencer admitted. Overhead, another firework cracked open, spraying green and gold across the clouds, but they only glanced up for an instant before looking back at the girl, who’d covered her ears in surprise.

“I wonder what it’s like,” Emily said in the following lull, her voice soft. “To be lifted like that, like he really believes his daughter could touch what she’s reaching for if he just holds her there…”

In that moment, Spencer knew that Emily thought just as much as he did, and he knew that she felt just as lost as him too, sometimes.

“It’s not too late,” he tried to console her. “There’s still more fireworks to come. Maybe your mom can come out and pick you up—”

But Emily huffed, cold air fogging from her breath. “Yes, it is,” she told him. “I don’t think Mom’s ever going to pick me up again—I don’t think she ever liked picking me up to begin with. She prefers me to stand on my own feet, alone.”

Spencer thought about that, distracted for a moment by trying to remember the last time he’d been carried and feeling a cold spike of _worry_ that maybe the last time had already passed—that his mom had already put him down for the last time and now he had to stand alone, just like Emily.

But he didn’t tell her that.

Instead, he squared his shoulders and said firmly, “No. It’s not too late, you’ll see. Even if it’s not your mom, _someone_ will hold you up like that one day, I promise. Even if it has to be me.”

After all, he believed completely that if someone lifted her just that little bit, Emily could absolutely touch the stars.

And Emily beamed at him, trusting him in that moment: “Well, okay,” she said with a sly smile, “but you know that I _refuse_ to let you get taller than me, so maybe it will have to be me picking _you_ up when we’re big.”

That, he decided, was perfectly okay too.


	8. Introducing Rotten Rossi

Strange things awaited them when they arrived back in London. The atmosphere around Winfield house was the very opposite of the Sometimes Home; everyone was tense, scurrying around with their heads down and whispering together, the whispers always stopping when either of the children entered the room. There were strange men standing at the exits and at the formerly empty guardhouse at the end of the drive, Emily more than once spotting someone patrolling outside in the gardens. Elizabeth was more absent than ever, until the day that she came home and requested they come to her office immediately.

“You may have noticed that security has been increased around the home and grounds,” she said to them when they were seated before her. “This won’t be the only change you’ll see this year, I’m afraid. These are untenable times we find ourselves in.”

Emily was fascinated: “Do they have guns?”

Elizabeth was not as amused. “Emily…”

“Knives?”

_“Emily.”_

Emily scowled. Her mom’s priorities were silly.

“Are we in danger?” asked Spencer, whose priorities were not silly and were also fixed firmly on wondering why there was security _here_ , where Elizabeth wasn’t and they were.

“No, no, absolutely not. However, the property may be, which may of course cause collateral damage. Therefore, you will both be attending security workshops with those who have been assigned to protect us detailing your responsibilities to them in order to make their jobs as easy as possible for everyone involved. On top of this, I’ve replaced your music lesson—” Emily perked up: “—with something I’ll think you’ll find very exciting, Emily. But that’s a surprise for later.”

Elizabeth smiled a little tightly, letting that sink in.

“This is _exciting_ ,” said Emily as they left the office together. “Do you think she’s going to let us learn how to shoot guns?”

Spencer didn’t think it was exciting at all. As they walked back to their sitting room, he caught a glimpse of one of the security men patrolling through the hall, and he worried.

 

The security workshop that they had to go to was as boring as expected. They were made to sit down with every single other person who worked at Winfield in a big room, right up the front on account of how short they were, where they couldn’t whisper or giggle. Even worse, sitting beside them was a new au pair, someone not like any au pair they’d ever had before. For one, their new sort-of-au-pair-but-not-really was _old_. Like, really old, at least thirty. For two, he was a he—a _man_. Emily had never been allowed to have a male au pair before, probably because it Wasn’t Done, at least until now.

His named was David Rossi and he definitely did not look happy that this was his new job. Emily had heard him talking to her mom before—that was how she knew that he was there to watch them—and as she whispered to Spencer, he was only there because he’d “pissed off the wrong asshole up in HR” and “this is temporary” and additionally “you’re assigning me to _children?”_ That last bit was said in the kind of voice that Emily used when her mom made her wear a new dress that she really didn’t care for, and Emily wasn’t sure that she liked being talked about like she was an ugly new dress.

But that was all they knew about him for the time being, because first they had to learn everything important that the stuffy man at the front of the room wanted them to know, like patrol routes and bag checks and What To Do If You See a Strange Package and how any strangers had to be reported to security and on and on and on…

By the end of it, even Spencer was looking a bit dozy, despite the detailed notes he was taking. And Emily was livid, because there were so many new rules in there that her brain couldn’t keep them all straight, like no more going outside alone and having to go _everywhere_ with someone and always telling people where they were. She was also beginning to suspect that David Rossi—David _Rotten_ , she decided he’d be called, because he was absolutely rotten, spoiling all her fun like this—wasn’t an au pair at all, but someone sent to watch them.

And she hated that more than she’d hated anything else in the world _ever_. And so she slumped in her chair, folded her arms, and began plotting.

 

Their surprise was ruined by the discovery that Rotten Rossi was to be their teacher. They walked into the room Elizabeth had told them to go to after the security meeting to find him standing there looking down at them in horror.

“You’re fu—” He stopped, breathed, and continued. “You’re _kidding_ me. Them?”

Elizabeth ignored how angry he sounded. “David, this is my daughter, Emily, and my foster child, Spencer. Children, greet Agent Rossi. He’s with the FBI and he’s going to be staying with us for a short time until the current state of affairs has settled.”

Spencer bowed shortly, murmuring hello. Emily just glared before her mother’s cough forced her into the world’s angriest curtsy.

“Well, aren’t you a sweet thing,” Rotten Rossi muttered, seeing her stormy face. He didn’t sound like he meant it.

“Right, now, Dave, _don’t_ get carried away, they’re children. Just what the men at the embassy this morning said would be appropriate. And, Emily?” Elizabeth paused, allowing Emily to shoot her a moody stare. “Do _not_ disobey Agent Rossi or get overexcited. This is a privilege I will revoke if it turns out you’re…” She paused, a look of distaste on her face. “Well, it’s not a privilege I agree with, but they’re insistent…” With a shake of her head, she left the room, leaving them there with Rotten Rossi and no clue what was coming next.

“Well, then,” he said heavily, looking at them as though he wasn’t really seeing them, his goateed mouth all twisted and grumpy. Emily resisted the urge to poke her tongue out at him. Spencer stared at his shirt and wondered if that was a gun he could see pulling at the fabric under his arm. “Guess this is it. Caroline was right, I need to shut my mouth more often.”

“Is Caroline your girlfriend?” Emily asked, latching onto that immediately. “Do you even have a girlfriend? You’re so old. I wouldn’t date you.”

They both stared at her, Spencer with a look of extreme horror on his face as he realised that she was going to be _herself_ —all of the worst parts—and Rossi stunned.

“I’m twenty-six,” he spluttered, but Emily looked him up and down slowly and narrowed her eyes. Suddenly, he felt very exposed.

“The beard must age you,” she said with savage satisfaction. “Oh well, I guess Caroline likes it.”

“She does—I—you—” Rossi made a scoffing sound. “Well I’m not dating _you_ , am I, twerp!”

Emily had never been called a twerp before, especially by an adult. She didn’t quite know how to react to that, drawing in a deep breath to yell and then pausing. Maybe she’d wait and see if she was hurt by it before she reacted.

“Um,” Spencer peeped out, aggressively not getting involved with this, whatever it was. “Was there something we were supposed to be… doing?”

“Oh, uh, yes.” Rossi shot Emily one last scathing look before looking around at the room they were in. It wasn’t really adequate for what he needed it for. “Yeah, your mother, carer, Elizabeth, whatever—she wants me to teach you lot self-defence.”

A moment of silence and then Emily clean forget she’d ever been called a twerp, standing up so straight with excitement that Spencer suddenly found himself a good inch and a half shorter than her. “Ohmygoshareyouactuallyserious,” she rambled out all in one breath like she’d forgotten oxygen was important in the exhilaration of the moment. “You’regoingtoteachustoactuallyfightohmygo—”

“Breathe, kid, _breathe,”_ Rossi exclaimed, seeing her face turning red and worrying that he’d already killed his tiny, annoying charge. “Christ. I’m not going to teach you to fight, you’re like six—”

“We’re _eleven_ ,” Spencer corrected, affronted.

“Six, eleven, whatever. I’m just going to teach you how to get away if someone grabs you, or what to do if you can’t get away. Okay?” He looked a little bored by this prospect, although Emily bounced.

“We could get away easier if we had guns—”

Emily stopped when Rossi stared at her, sighing a little. It had been worth a shot.

“Fine,” she declared. “I _guess_ you better just teach us the basics then.”

Rossi really didn’t trust the expression on her face, a little calculating and definitely devious. Instead, he looked at Spencer, wondering what to expect from the weedy kid in his glasses and neat vest—no doubt an endless series of—

“Why?” asked Spencer. Rossi wilted. “Why do we have to learn this? Are we in danger? Is _Emily_ in danger?”

Rossi hated working with kids. Nine more months of this and he’d even miss Gideon.

 

“I think if I was ever kidnapped, I’d dig out. They wouldn’t be expecting that, right?” Emily rolled back on her bed, tipping her head back to stare at Spencer, who was buried in a book like he’d been for the past _infinity_ days. “Just like a mole, straight down and out. Are you even listening to me?”

“Uhuh,” Spencer’s voice said from inside the book, pages turning rapidly.

Emily watched him, wiggling her feet around and wondering what he was reading that was so fascinating. Meanwhile, she was planning _important_ things—like how they could get back at Rotten Rossi for making what should be such an exciting class so unbearably boring. All he did was show different ways they could be grabbed and how they could get away from that grabbing, although Emily did like his wry suggestion that poking in the eyes was a good escape. Mostly, he just told them to yell for help, which also didn’t help if they were _alone,_ Emily felt like pointing out. It wasn’t that exciting at _all_ , not like being kidnapped would be—what if they weren’t grabbed? What if they were tied up or put in a bag or thrown into the back of a car? What then, huh? They should be learning how to  _drive,_ so they could make a speedy getaway!

But Spencer didn’t seem to want to talk about it, just continuing to flip through his pile of books and newspapers he’d been devouring in the week since they’d started their self-defence classes. Probably because he wasn’t very good at any of it and got scared every time Rossi grabbed him.

“Do you have any books on booby-traps?” she asked, rolling over and sitting upright as a brainwave struck her. “We could booby-trap his room?”

“I don’t think we should booby-trap his room.” Spencer emerged from the book, looking like an owl all wide-eyed and not blinking behind his big glasses. “I think we need to _listen_ to him, Emily—especially you.”

“What, why? He’s such a grandpa. We can just wiggle away from people trying to steal us, you watch. Like worms. Maybe we should cover ourselves in _butter_ —”

“Emily…” That was Spencer’s voice, but the grumble was all Elizabeth, and Emily poked her tongue out at him in return. Spencer, meanwhile, saw nothing to be joked about in their current situation—he shook out the broadsheet paper he’d been reading and pointed to the headline: _Hot Autumn Spreads: Terroristic Threats in London._ “There’s been threats against diplomatic families—that’s why we’ve got all these security people.”

Emily glanced at the paper, disinterested. “Well, then we’re fine, aren’t we? There’s always threats. I threaten to do stuff all the time that I don’t do—”

Up went another paper, Spencer jabbing his finger at it. It was a paper from the month before, in December, and Emily stared at the picture of rubble and smoke on the front page. _Iraqi Consulate Bombing Claims Lives of 61._ “Consulate,” he read out. “Emily, that means _embassy._ Just like London’s—like your mom’s. And look, here in this book—it’s a list of kidnappings undertaken by terrorist organisations, usually of diplomatic families in order to coerce political discussions. _See_. We’ve got to be serious!”

Emily wasn’t sure what to make of any of that. Spencer, on the other hand, was very sure—he wasn’t a diplomatic family, he was just a boy. But Emily? Emily was _important_. And if terrorists were going to kidnap her, he had to stop them.

His brain clicked back to what she’d said before, whirring over it.

“Hey,” he said slowly. “What was that about booby traps?”

 

“What on _earth_ were you thinking?” Elizabeth berated them four days later as they sheepishly sat in her office receiving what was, by now, a regular dressing down. “Booby traps?!”

Rossi made a soft noise from behind them—it sounded like a laugh but, when they glanced back at him, his face looked like it had never smiled in all his life, ever.

“We were protecting Emily from terrorists,” Spencer protested. “We forgot about the maids…”

“But I was super protected, Mom,” Emily added with a bright smile. “And we really gave her a good shock, wow.”

Elizabeth briefly considered adoption.

“You filled Emily’s bedroom with tripwires—” she began slowly, folding her hands in front of her and looking down at the employee complaint form that had been filed for ‘providing an unsafe workplace environment’.

“So the terrorists would trip and drop their guns and bombs,” Emily explained. “If the maids wanted to get in, they could have asked—we left the path to the window clear, so that’s how I’ve been getting in and out all week.”

“What if the terrorists came in through the window?” Rossi asked mildly.

There was a quiet beat of thought, both Spencer and Emily’s faces falling in unison.

Elizabeth ignored them, shooting a fast glare at Rossi telling him to shut up and stop encouraging this. “You rigged the doors to _explode when opened_. How?!”

“Flour within a can containing a slow-burning lit candle,” Spencer said quickly and with such relish that Elizabeth _knew_ this was his idea. “We suspended the flour above the can so it would fall into the flame if the door was opened, making a bang—but no flames, honest, I was really careful about how much flour I used! And I’m sorry it was the maid, really. I hope she’s okay…”

“So we’d hear the terrorists coming,” Emily added redundantly. “And give them such a fright they’d have to stop and think about what they were doing while we went out the window.”

Rossi made the noise again, both children looking at him suspiciously.

“We’re also really sorry they got the ink all over them,” Spencer added, genuinely looking very guilty and unhappy to be so. “That probably won’t wash out very well…”

“That was in case the other traps didn’t work and they actually stole me,” Emily said glumly, seeing Elizabeth’s face and, rightfully, realising that nothing but punishment was heading their way, despite how wonderfully clever they’d been. “You’d be able to find them because they’d be the only terrorists in all of London painted green. That was _my_ idea.”

“It was a very good idea,” Spencer whispered to her.

“Thanks, Spencer,” she whispered back.

Elizabeth took a very deep breath, and then another one. “Right,” she said. “Your punishments.”

 

In the end, the punishments weren’t so bad. Spencer didn’t think so either, and Emily had come around to not minding. Since the maids now refused to clean their wing of the house, they had to do it all themselves, a board going up in their sitting room that read “Our Chores” and included such things as mopping the floors and dusting window-sills and changing their bed linen. Chambers informed them sternly that he would be keeping an eye on them to make sure they did it all _correctly_ , and the children rather thought that this was actually an unexpected bit of freedom. Doing chores, they’d found, was very grown-up—if boring—and the novelty of it kept them from complaining too much, at least for now.

And they were told: no more booby traps. Which was more disappointing than the chores, honestly.

 

“So,” announced Rotten Rossi the next time they went in to be taught how to escape being grabbed for the fifty-billionth time. “I figure you lot are getting bored, since you’re resorting to guerrilla warfare tactics on the hired help, therefore I’ve thought up a new lesson. One rule though.”

Emily groaned. She _hated_ rules. “What is it?” she asked grumpily.

Rossi leaned closer, revealing a hessian bag from behind his back and showing her it with a wink. “If you promise not to tell your mother,” he mock-whispered, Spencer staring at the bag, “I’ll put you in this bag and let you escape it. How’s _that_ for fun?”

“ _Brilliant!”_ Emily announced, Spencer bouncing in his excitement to be put in the bag first.

Maybe, just maybe, Rossi thought as he watched the bag wiggle about on the floor, Spencer giggling within and Emily shouting bad advice from without, nine more months of this wouldn’t be so bad after all.


	9. Rainy Day Rope Tricks

Spring, which was supposed to be a breath of fresh air compared to the cold and dreary winter, proved to really be nothing of the sort. The children were beginning to think that maybe seasons hadn’t gotten the memo that London existed, winter just hanging around for ever making everything cold and wet and boring.

They were stuck home this weekend, having been hauled along to church by Chambers and then hauled back home to find that Rossi wasn’t even there to give the secret lesson he’d promised: how to escape being tied up. Spencer had inspired it, finding a bunch of books on Houdini and other escape artists and starting up a new fascination with magic and sleight of hand. While Emily—and Rossi—were disinterested in the conjuring and card tricks that Spencer had spent the last month practising, Emily was fascinated by Houdini’s escape acts, pestering Rossi constantly until he agreed to help her try some of them out. And _not_ the underwater ones, he was absolutely firm on, which she thought showed a lack of imagination on his behalf.

But Rossi wasn’t here. They had a new security person with them on the drive to church who waited outside before escorting them home, and he wasn’t in his room either when they went and battered on his door. Emily was sour about the betrayal; Spencer just wanted to try his new card trick on someone.

“Let’s go ask Mr Chambers where he is,” Spencer suggested, mostly because he suspected Chambers might appreciate his magic tricks in a way Rossi and Emily just didn’t. Down they went to the man’s office, letting themselves in and sitting at his desk waiting for him to return.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed upon walking in and finding them there. “You two are terrifying. What do you want? And how did you get in here?”

“Picked the lock,” Emily replied quickly, earning a cool stare from Chambers. “Okay, the door was open, but if I _could_ pick locks, you know I would.”

“And I pray every day that you never meet anyone who will teach you to do so,” Chambers muttered, striding past and grabbing for his overcoat and umbrella. “Out, the both of you. I need to leave. Why are you here?”

“Agent Rossi’s not here,” Spencer informed him. “We’re supposed to have a kidnapping lesson today.”

Chambers blinked. “You have lessons on kidnappings?”

“Yup,” Emily answered cheerfully, eagle eyes watching him grab his stuff. “We’re very good at it now. The _best_ kidnappers that Agent Rotten’s ever taught. Where are you going? Can we come? We’re bored and Spencer’s going to make me watch him drop cards all afternoon if we stay.”

“I don’t _drop_ cards.” Spencer scowled at her, trying to split the deck he was playing with and doing just that. “Oh. Oh no.”

Chambers thought about that quickly, running over the pros and cons. “What are you going to do if you stay?” he asked carefully, testing the waters of what he’d have to deal with if he left them here bored and essentially unsupervised, since the security detail had stressed over and over that if lives weren’t in danger, they weren’t getting involved—not involved, Chamber had found, meant that they wouldn’t stop Emily from climbing a drain pipe chasing squirrels, but they _would_ teach Spencer how to cheat at Poker, and honestly, what were they actually keeping the children safe _from?_

The children, thinking fast, realised that it was in their best interests to make him not want to leave them there.

“I’ll probably see what my squirrels are up to,” Emily said, swinging her feet happily under the chair she was sitting on as she remembered just how purple Chambers had turned to see her _so_ high.

“I guess I could go by the kitchens,” Spencer said innocently, shuffling the deck of cards that went everywhere with him currently. “Hannagan said he’d teach me Blackjack on his lunch break.” And he smiled in such a way that it left Chambers completely unsure as to whether the smile meant he was excited about _learning_ Blackjack, or if he was excited over the fact that he’d successfully convinced Hannagan that he didn’t _know_ Blackjack—therefore setting up the perfect hustle.

“One day, Elizabeth must tell me from which circle of hell she summoned you both,” Chambers muttered to himself, neither children hearing him and both watching him curiously. “Fine. Come on—get your coats. And no backchat.”

 

Knowing that they had a good thing going, both Spencer and Emily were silent on the car drive, playing a quiet game with their stuffed animals on the seat between them. Chambers watched them in the rear-view mirror occasionally, as the hare and the raven seemed to be undergoing some kind of a savage battle over possession of the centre seat-belt.

“Are we going to your house?” Spencer asked suddenly, glancing out the window and pinpointing where they were with terrifying accuracy considering he hadn’t been watching the roads as they went. “Why are we going to your house?”

“I need to work from home for a few hours,” Chambers explained. “Someone I rely on to remain there while I’m at Winfield had to dash out on an emergency. You’ll be perfectly entertained while I work, no fear—I have plenty of movies for you to watch.” And there, he thought with satisfied smugness, they would be far less likely to break a limb or gamble than they would left to their own devices at the house.

“How do you work from home when you’re a steward?” Emily asked, swooping her raven through the air and clattering his beak against Spencer’s glasses. “Isn’t your job to be at the house _all_ the time? How do you work without the house?”

“Scheduling, budgets, inventory. Someone has to go over the food and utility orders every month—” Chambers stopped, realising Emily had stopped listening about the point he’d said ‘budgets’. “Boring grown-up things, Miss Emily.”

“Gross,” she replied. “When I’m grown, I won’t do budgets at all. I won’t need to, I’ll be _far_ too rich.”

“Being rich means you have to do more budgets,” Spencer explained. “Because of taxes and investment banking and retirement portfolios.” Since the last time taxes had come up, he’d done his research on the matter and now had a moderate understanding of financial matters—which was very important to him as recently, he’d found, not knowing things he could discover was a disagreeable prospect.

“Well, you can hire an actuary,” Chambers suggested, rolling his eyes at her.

“Or I’ll just be poor instead,” Emily declared. “I’ll give all my money to Spencer so he has to do all the budgets and I’ll live in a cardboard box under a river.”

“Under a bridge,” Spencer corrected.

“No, under a river. I will be wet and happy that I have no budgets, like all grown-ups should be.”

“You’d be _dead_. The world-record for a human holding their breath is only—”

Suddenly, Chambers began to regret bringing them. Was eleven-year-olds gambling really such a terrible thing?

 

The children followed Chambers into his creepy, narrow, echoing house, suddenly remembering their abortive attempt to investigate this place. Obediently, they followed his directions into a sunken sitting room, sitting down on brown and orange cushions as he found a movie for them to watch and put it into the player, rewinding it with a _whirrrrrr_.

“ _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ ,” he informed them, pressing play. He’d thought about _Star Wars_ , but honestly couldn’t handle Emily getting lightsabre battles into her head. What bad influence could they possibly take from Dahl? “Now, sit quietly and I’ll make you a snack and then I must work. Do _not,_ under any circumstances, go upstairs. Do you understand?”

They nodded. They absolutely understood: that did not mean that they were going to obey. But they at least had to _look_ like they were going to obey, at least until after Chambers returned with root beer and popcorn and left them to pick out the squares of chocolate he’d scattered through the popcorn bowl for them. They listened as they ate, not to the movie that was playing softly, but to the sound of Chambers hurrying upstairs, walking around above them, and then hurrying back down and into his office with the door partially shut.

“So,” said Emily as soon as they were sure that he was busy and not about to check on them anymore. “What do you reckon the chances are that he’s got ghosts locked away up there? I read this book recently and this man kept his wife in the attic because she’d gone _mad—”_

Spencer paused, looking at her sternly.

“Not real-life mad, not like your mom,” Emily finished fast, sensing her misstep. “Storybook mad.”

“My mom isn’t mad,” Spencer said quietly. “But I don’t think you can lock up ghosts. Do you think he has a wife up there?”

“No,” Emily said after a moment of thought. “Because I was asking one of the maids and she says the reason he’s so stiff is because he hasn’t got a wife to suck the stiff out of him.” She laughed, just like the maid had when she’d said it, seeing Spencer look confused and a little appalled. “I think it’s a sex thing.”

“Sounds like a kissing thing,” Spencer said doubtfully.

“Nah, it’s gotta be a sex thing. She giggled and went all red when she said it, like it was _bad_ , so it has to be really rude. So if he’s got a wife up there, she’s not doing much for him.”

There was a thump upstairs, low and creaking and silencing them both—Spencer from questioning why Emily was talking to the maids about sex things and Emily from pointing out that if _she_ was a wife, she wouldn’t be having anything to do with those kinds of expectations, thank you very much. Why was it _her_ fault if her husband was grumpy?

“Definitely ghosts,” Spencer whispered. “We should have investigated that night.”

“We can investigate _now?”_ Emily suggested, quickly piling the ugly pillows on the ugly couch and trying to use a nearby crocheted blanket to make it look like they were under the blanket watching the movie. “If you think you can be super quiet.”

“I don’t know…”

“What kind of a magician are you if you can’t be super quiet in a haunted house? I’m pretty sure that’s on the entrance exam you have to take to get into wizard’s school.”

“Wizard’s school doesn’t exist.” But, despite his surety, Spencer shuffled over to help her arrange the pillows convincingly. “Alright, we’ll investigate. But if we get caught, it was your idea.”

“When is it ever not my idea?”

 

They went about it in a very serious fashion, knowing that there was no mucking around to be had when one was investigating ghosts. Blackavar, whose name had finally stuck, and Balthy were left behind on the couch to guard the popcorn, and the two children crawled on their bellies past the partially open door of Chambers’ office, hoping this would keep them out of eyesight of the man. It was a slow process, and the floor was surprisingly dusty considering how clean Chambers was, so they had to bite back a number of sneezes, choking them down or muffling them in the crooks of their arms. Finally, they reached the staircase, looking up into the gloomy dark of the upper floor.

“You first,” Emily whispered.

Spencer rolled his eyes at her, not wanting to be first in case something launched from the dark at him—but resigning himself to it. “Alright. Walk on the edges—by the wall. It won’t creak there. And watch out for signs of hauntings!” They’d read enough that they knew what they were, handprints in the wallpaper or ectoplasm leaking from the ceiling, and they watched as they went slowly… foot by foot… up the stairs. Not a creak betrayed them. Their socked feet were silent and careful, long years of cautious sneaking around their homes coming in handy on this very auspicious occasion. And finally they found themselves at the top, peering around the wall to find an even _narrower_ hall that was dark and dusty the whole way down, floorboards covered by a rug worn-thin.

At the end of the hall, there was a door. It was a very spooky looking door, barely closed with a narrow line of light showing through and a rasping air sound coming from within, like the room itself was breathing. They looked curiously at each other before pressing to the wall and sidling their way up the hall, every placement of their feet thoughtful. Closer… and closer… and closer… with the breathing getting louder as they approached, offset by the quiet hum of a television set playing football.

There was a cough. Hollow and barking and they stopped and shivered as one, Spencer going to rapidly reverse but Emily shoving him forward. _Go!_ she mouthed at him, ignoring his wide-eyed stare. “Just a peek!”

A peek wasn’t so bad. What could happen to him in a peek—except, he was sure, that if he saw an _actual_ ghost, how could he ever feel safe again in this world?! If there were ghosts, what else could there be? Werewolves? Aliens? Poltergeists? His whole life would be diverted by uncertainty!

But one of them had to look and so, because his was the scientific mind and Emily’s the dangerously imaginative one, it had to be him. He slipped closer and closer, glancing back to find that Emily hadn’t moved despite his desperate stare, just standing there with her hands over her mouth looking terrified. Closer he crept, alone…

“Who’s there?” boomed a voice from the room, Spencer almost leaping into the air with shock like a startled cat. If he’d had a tail, it would be fluffed up and fat right now, Emily thought with a panicked giggle. “What’s that? Eric? Boy?”

_Boy?_ Spencer mouthed. He was a boy. But not Eric… but…

Swallowing, he smoothed his hands over his trousers and walked bravely forward, ignoring Emily’s moaned, “Don’t go in there!” And into the room he went, pushing open the door and coughing a bit at the smell. It wasn’t a bad smell, not really, just surprisingly strong—like medicine or a hospital. And the room was bright and lived in, unlike the rooms downstairs, with yellow curtains open wide and no dust on the floor. A man watched Spencer from a bed surrounded by more pillows and books, his blue-white eyes narrowed as he peered at Spencer.

“You’re short,” the man said, coughing more. Spencer blinked, his eyes tracking the tube that ran from the man’s nose right across to a machine that breathed and chuffed loudly beside the bed. “Why are you so short?”

“I’m a child,” Spencer said sensibly. “We’re commonly found to be smaller than the adult versions of our species.”

“Why are you a child?” the man asked next.

Spencer considered that. “Societal conventions,” he decided eventually, not scared anymore, not really. As though bolstered by his calmness, Emily appeared next to him, doing the same stare at the noisy machine as Spencer was, her nose wrinkling.

“There’s two short people now,” the man announced to them. “Another child. Why is my room filled so abruptly with children? Are there more of you out there? Do you hunt in packs?”

“No, just the two of us,” Emily answered. “We hunt in twos. What’s the machine do? Is it a part of you? Are you a _cyborg?”_

“It keeps me alive, apparently, like I’m not old and bitter enough to do that myself.” The man huffed, a huff that turned into a wheeze that seemed to shake his whole frame until his fingers were clutching at the covers. Spencer walked across to the bedside cupboard, pouring from a pitcher of water into a plastic cup with a straw in it and holding it out politely. “See? Why keep me alive. I have to be watered by a child like a pot plant. Bah.”

“Would you rather you died?” Emily asked curiously. “I wouldn’t. Dying seems boring. My priest says there are absolutely no hedgehogs in heaven and that I should stop asking and making a mockery of the system.”

“Does he?” The man smiled, showing yellowed teeth and white gums. “That sounds a bit shit then. What kind of heaven doesn’t have hedgehogs? I’d asked for a refund on your religion of choice, girl. Pick a better one. I hear if you’re a Buddhist you can _be_ a hedgehog if you’re the hedgehoggy kind of soul.”

“Can you?” Emily’s eyes went huge with the possibilities.

“Dunno, probably. Sounds alright though, doesn’t it? Right, since you’re in my room, what’re your names, the both of you? You have got names, don’t you? You don’t just break into people’s homes without names, I assume you’ve got parents, somewhere.”

“I’m Emily,” said Emily. “And that’s Spencer.”

“Hi,” Spencer added, waving awkwardly and smiling with all of his mouth, which Emily told him made him look a bit froggy, but that he couldn’t help but do when he was feeling out of sorts.

“Interesting. And what do you do?”

They’d never been asked what they _did_ before. It was such a broad question, Spencer had utterly no idea where to start. With basic functions of the body and up, he guessed?

Emily had no such qualms, hopping up onto the bed and settling in for a good long explanation of everything that made up her very exciting except when it was boring life. “Right, well,” she began with a big breath to be sure she had enough air to get all the way through. “This is everything I’ve done today since breakfast, beginning with the moth.”

Spencer sat down, picking up a nearby book and beginning to page through. This was probably going to take a while.

 

When he looked up again, Emily was still talking and the light outside the curtains had shifted.

“You definitely have never seen an elephant,” Emily was arguing. “ _I’ve_ never seen an elephant. When did you get to see an elephant, you’re so _old_?”

“I wasn’t always old and in a bed, you watch your tongue! I was young like you once, not when I saw the elephant though. No, I was… hmm, I’m going to say twenty-six then and a strapping young lad, travelling through Asia. Have you ever been to Asia?”

“No. I’ve been to Pakistan though, with my mom. I don’t know if there were elephants though.”

“I think you’re a fibber. You’ve never been to Pakistan.” The man was smiling as he said this and Spencer raised an eyebrow, not sure if they were fighting or not. They didn’t seem to be? Emily was bouncing, which she only did when cheerful, and the man’s grin wasn’t mean, just unsettling. “You’re a little fibbing girl.”

“No, I’m not. You’re a big fibbing man. You’ve never seen an elephant!”

“I _rode_ an elephant, so there! Why, I was a part of the French Foreign Legion and we rode elephants to war on them, galloping down on our enemies! My elephant was called Trixie and she was a peach.” The man wheezed laughter at Emily’s half-convinced, half-sceptical stare. “I’ve got a picture around here somewhere of me and Trixie and some pretty showgirls, my my, weren’t they gorgeous back in the day. Not like now, when a girl can’t get her top off without someone screaming oppression, but back then boy the things we—” He paused, staring at Emily for a moment. “How old did you say you were again?”

“We’re eleven,” Spencer said, putting down his eighth book and picking up another, considering the need for him to learn to speed-read as he saw at least twelve more titles he wanted to read before they left here.

“Ah. Eleven. That’s a very young age. Well, what I was saying, those showgirls, they’re lovely lasses. We danced all night with them, until our feet were sore, we did, and then they helped us with our nuts. To feed Trixie, you see.”

“Oh!” Emily nodded seriously. “Because elephants like peanuts, right?”

“Right! You’re a clever thing.”

Emily beamed.

There was a gentle cough by the door, all of their heads turning to find Chambers standing there looking aggrieved. “Perhaps my instructions should have been for you to absolutely come upstairs,” he said with his arms folded and foot tapping, “since you seem to delight in doing the exact opposite of what I tell you to do.”

“Oh don’t snarl at them, boy,” the man boomed, slapping his hands on his bedcovers. “I haven’t had company like this in years, the nurses never believe my stories!”

Emily’s head snapped around. “I knew you were fibbing!” she cried furiously, betrayed. “I knew! I wasn’t fooled!”

“Was,” Spencer muttered into his book, trying to read faster so he could find out more about an internal combustion engine before they had to go. Just a few more pages…

“I was only fibbing about some,” the man shot back. “Some was true. You gotta use your critical brain and think about it, figure out what was true and what wasn’t. Like a puzzle. Eric, boy, I want these small people to visit more. You should bring them back, to be a comfort to an old dying man.”

“I don’t think you’re even dying,” Emily said under her breath.

“Dad…” Chambers began, earning a stare from both children. It didn’t seem possible that such an old man like Chambers still had a _dad_. “We’ll see. I’ll speak to Elizabeth, and _only_ if the children want to return.”

But on the way out, Emily looked back at the old man and winked: she knew they’d be back. It was nice, she’d found, having someone to talk to who actually wanted to listen—even if he was a terrible fibber. And Spencer had so many more books to read.

She was right.


	10. Twelve Years Young

At some point, without either of them noticing, Spencer had stopped being homesick. There was too much to do for him to be able to focus time on being sad, like Emily finally successfully tracking down a family of hedgehogs in their gardens and spending time with the oldest Mr Chambers as he continued trying to convince Emily that he’d lived the most exciting life a person could ever live. After some attempts to draw Spencer into the conversations, he’d given up on him, although he watched Spencer sometimes trying to figure out just what this strange boy was about.

“Spencer’s read every book in here,” Emily announced one day, bouncing up on the bed and taking an offered lolly from the container the man shook at them. Spencer took one too, whispering thank you and returning to his second reread of some of his favourites. “Do you have any more?”

“More books? Well, probably. Check in that cupboard there, boy. You read so much it’s a wonder you don’t turn into a book—just like a boy I knew back in Spain, just, poof! One day he was a human, the next a manual on how to roast potatoes! Remarkable!”

Emily narrowed her eyes at him. Spencer just sighed and went to the cupboard, digging his fingers into the indented handle and trying to drag it open on dusty sliders. It fought him with every pull, grating and groaning as years of decay were disturbed, until he’d finally gotten it open enough that he could peer around the door and look within. It smelled like mice and old paper and he reached in and tentatively felt around until he touched something hard and cold, pulling forth an intricate looking clock made of tiny latticed pieces of metal all interlocked together. Spencer turned it back and forth, ignoring Emily and the man’s conversation as he noticed that the clock wasn’t working anymore, with bits looking like they were missing and no batteries in it. And no _spots_ for a battery either.

“What’s that you got there, boy?” The man struggled up to look down at the clock. “Huh. Thought that old thing was lost. Was one of the first ones I ever made, you know.”

“ _You_ made this?” Spencer asked disbelievingly. It had to be another story—people didn’t make clocks, _factories_ made clocks. And then you bought them in the shops and put batteries in them to make them tick—except this one didn’t have batteries, rattling slightly as he turned it over again and looked at the silent face.

“I did. That’s my old maker’s mark on the bottom, see that. That’s my name. GC. Gilbert Chambers. Bring it here.”

Spencer did, taking a seat next to Emily and holding the clock out, not letting go as the man touched it with narrow, knobby fingers. He wasn’t entirely convinced the man could hold the weight of the clock if he was to let go.

“Right, right, I see. Hmm. Get back in that cupboard, wiggle right in there, you’ve got small bits you can do it—see if you can find a box in there, and the pendulum.”

“What’s a pendulum do on a clock?” Spencer asked curiously as he did just that, Emily hopping down and helping him haul the door open a bit wider with a loud shriek of wood.

“It’s a weight. Helps the clock run. You like reading how things work—Eric might have a couple of my old books around here. It’s why they don’t need batteries, boy, the pendulum acts as a counterweight making the mechanisms tick tick tick. It’s called a ‘harmonic oscillator’ and that’s your five-dollar word for today. Come on, where’s that box? Eric? Eric! Get here!”

Chambers appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled. “I really do need to be back to Winfield soon,” he said absently, barely even seeming to notice the flurry of movement in the room. “What is it? Miss Emily, what are you…”

“Where are my clock books? The boy is interested.” The old man coughed, flapping his hand at Chambers as Spencer finally unwedged a box from a pile of papers, bringing everything spilling free—including a tarnished silver weight on a long hook, which Emily picked up and examined. “Get them for him. And my old tools—not the clock ones, those are here, my actual tools. Boys should have tools if they’re interested.”

“Girls should have tools too,” Emily added, helping Spencer lift the box up to the bed and open it.

Chambers had vanished after a wary look at the box, reappearing with a toolbox piled with yellowed, spiral-bound notebooks and a distasteful twist to his mouth. “Miss Emily, your clothes are going to get dusty, I’m really not sure your mother would approve.”

“Sure she would, I’m improving myself.” Emily snapped open the box, gasping at what was inside. “Look how little this screwdriver is! Oh!”

Spencer peered in, eyes widening as he found the most chaotic arrangement of elaborate tools within, springs and screws and coils of metal filling the box to the brim.

“Right, give me that and that and sit here and watch—I’m going to show you how to fix a clock. Girl, you can look too if you like, though I bet you’ll get bored.”

“Bet I won’t,” Emily retorted, settling in.

Chambers just shook his head. “Half an hour and we’re leaving,” he warned them, but none of the three on the bed took any notice of him.

 

Emily did get bored. As it turned out, clock-making was not her forte, even though Spencer seemed utterly entranced by being the old man’s hands. The man directed him on which parts to pry loose or carefully unscrew, his own hands far too shaky to do the fine work anymore, and Spencer was captivated by watching the complex machine come apart and back together under his hands. Making things, he realised, was also a kind of magic.

Emily, on the other hand, went exploring in the cupboard. She was a little awed to find a picture of a young man who _might_ have been the old man years ago standing with an elephant decked out in tassels and almost naked girls, sitting with her legs crossed examining the topless women and wondering if she’d ever look like that one day, except with less stars stuck to her boobs. Tucking the picture aside for further perusal later, she dived back in, finding a leather pouch and unfolding it to find that it was filled with straight tools like she’d never seen before.

“What are these?” she asked, holding them up.

The man glanced at them. “Lock picks,” he announced. “You can keep them, if you don’t tell Eric. He’s always been a stiff biscuit about things like that.

Emily gasped, before carefully tucking the lockpicks deep into the pockets of her dress to be hidden away at home. And then she heard it—the tick tock tick tock of a working clock, leaping up in a shower of papers to find Spencer holding up their now working clock.

“Em, look what I _did_ ,” he gasped, mouth in the biggest smile she’d ever seen on him. “I fixed something!”

But their celebrations were cut short as the door opened and Chambers leaned in, informing them that it was home time. Disappointed, they packed up the cupboard—with some difficulty, Spencer putting the clock on the old man’s bedside cupboard with tender care.

“Boy,” whispered the man, pressing his finger to his mouth in a shushing motion. “Look in that drawer. Under my hankies, yup in there. See it?”

Spencer withdrew a shiny silver pocket watch, holding it out curiously.

“Yup. That. Take it. A boy should always be able to keep time—and I haven’t got enough time left to bother with it. Just keep it wound and it’ll be as steady as your own heart.”

“Is that the watch Mum gave you?” Chambers asked, glancing over. “He’s a child. He’ll lose or break it.”

“Nonsense he will. He’s got a maker’s heart, look at him. Steady hands.” The old man winked. “Now, get out of here. I need to sleep. Shoo!”

They shooed, Emily wondering if Chambers knew why the ladies in the photo had gotten so naked just to pet an elephant—but maybe she shouldn’t ask him that, he got pretty upset about things like that—and Spencer holding the pocket watch in his hands like he’d never been gifted anything more precious.

 

As though time had simply been waiting for them to enjoy their time in London, it began racing by without pause. Although they didn’t make any new friends at school, they enjoyed their time there and they still had each other. Spencer’s teachers all watched him curiously, murmuring quietly about his future between themselves. Emily’s teachers did the same, seeing a potential in her that she wasn’t yet quite fully taking advantage of. Emily became fluent in her fourth language and, after a murmur from her mother, they were both listed to take Italian come the next school year. Spencer took a class on piano and realised that it was all math and therefore simple, taking to it with an ease belayed only by his disinterest in music beyond how satisfying it was to turn math into sound.

At home, their time was taken up with Emily hunting hedgehogs and writing stories about her adventures. Spencer tagged along sometimes, lugging his gifted box of tools with him and pestering the gardeners to show him how to use them. By the time the school year was rolling around to an end, he’d learned how to unblock pipes and reaffix gutters to roofs and even how to change the washer on a leaky faucet. Every new skill he learned, he practised, waiting until Chambers agreed to take them to his home to visit the old man and then slipping away to find something broken or leaky to fix. Chambers always wondered what kind of a fairy had been flittering through his house afterwards, as things he’d always intended to get a man out to fix suddenly began working again.

The security personnel around, mostly bored as the threat level decreased without incident, continued teaching Spencer how to play cards, not realising that he’d been quietly teaching himself how to count cards in anticipation. Before long, Emily clued into the profitability of getting her own share of his winnings—usually lollies or trinkets with the occasional tenner—and joined in, her Poker face terrifying when paired with Spencer’s apparent naivety. Rossi, who was coming up to the end of his assignment here and very sorry to be doing so now that he’d found a new pursuit on his time off in the form of a very beautiful French ambassador who was helping him chase away all his woes about Caroline leaving him the year prior, graduated the children from bags and holds. After getting stern promises from both of them that they wouldn’t tell _anyone_ , he’d spent a glorious few weeks in the sitting room with the door locked and floor covered in pillows as he taught the children how to throw each other. Even Spencer had fun with it, although Emily beat him every time and Rossi had on two occasions had to move fast to stop her flinging him into a wall accidentally instead of the cushioned floor.

Right now, he was reading a newspaper while the two zip-tied children wiggled about on the floor, giggling and bickering about the best ways to escape their predicament. Rossi, who seriously doubted that they could, was merely enjoying the break from having to supervise them.

Until the giggling stopped and, belatedly, he realised it was silent, looking up to find Spencer and Emily un-zip tied and watching him seriously, twin smug smiles on both their faces.

“How?” he exclaimed, leaping up and staring at the neatly sawed through zip ties on the floor where they had been sitting.

“Secret,” chirped both the kids in unison, beaming at him, and Emily adding, “I’ll tell you if you teach us to shoot.”

Rossi considered that.

“How about you tell me and I show you how to use those lockpicks of yours?” he fired back, just as fast and feeling assured that he wouldn’t be the one who had to deal with the repercussions of her knowing how to pick locks, seeing as he’d be gone in two months.

Emily perked up instantly. “Can you show us how to get out of _handcuffs?”_ she asked, Rossi nodding. “Right, brilliant. Spence, get the zip ties.”

And, to Rossi’s stunned awe, he watched as she quickly tied her friend back up and stood back as he wiggled himself like a little monkey down and through the loop of his arms until they were in front of him instead of behind—a trick Rossi had taught them—and began sawing at the ties using his shoelace. The ties snapped rapidly, his hands coming loose and Spencer leaping up to show him. “See,” he said cheerfully. “I just utilised friction—”

“You are both going to be terrifying adults,” Rossi said, which was true, adding, “And I’m so glad I won’t have to deal with you,” which was not true at all, although he didn’t know this at the time.

All in all, nineteen-eighty-two was very much the year of them learning new things and, although they didn’t know this yet either, it set the stage for the rest of their lives.

 

A familiar letter was sent home come the end of term. Emily saw Chambers walking past with it, the school letterhead upon the envelope, and bolted to her room to wait out the lecture she was sure was coming. Maybe the school had found out what she’d done to Lucy Bell’s schoolbooks, or about the lizards in the science lab, or—

But it wasn’t Emily who was duly summoned to Elizabeth’s office upon the reading of the letter: it was Spencer. Emily watched him go almost bursting with curiosity, wondering why he looked like he was walking to his death when they all knew schools only ever had _good_ things to say about him.

And in the office, a conversation was being had about his future.

“I’m not accustomed to asking a child their opinion on adult matters, but your mother is insistent that you be treated as an adult regarding this,” Elizabeth was saying seriously to the withdrawn boy sitting hunched up on the chair before her desk. “Sit up straight. Don’t slouch, it’s unbecoming.” Spencer straightened, head tipped down and eyes hidden below hair that Elizabeth noted she would have to leave a message to have cut soon. It was too long for a boy. “Are you listening, Spencer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what are your thoughts regarding your higher education? The school is adamant that there is only so much more you can gain from a secondary level education, although both they and I question whether you are far too young to be considering tertiary. However, they’ve allowed me the option of having an exam period set aside for you to gain your college entry this year, if you wish.”

Spencer thought about that for a bit, staring at his lap. “That means I’ll be barely twelve when I start college,” he said slowly, feeling cold. It was bad enough he was in classes with seventeen-year-olds right now—in college, they’d be even _older_. “Will I attend university in London?”

“At this point, I don’t know. It would serve you more to attend the same college throughout your degree, in my opinion, and if you intend upon an academic career in the states, networking will be easier if you begin during your early years of undergrad. However, while I may be convinced that you are ready for tertiary education, I baulk completely at the idea of you living on-campus at twelve.” She paused, mouth thinning a little. “Your mother disagreed, but I don’t believe she is assessing your abilities well, currently. Her state is erratic.”

Spencer’s head snapped up. His mom’s last letters had been strange, he’d noticed, and there was a lot in those statements Elizabeth wasn’t saying. “But if Mom says I have to live on-campus at an American college, it’s her choice, right? I’m only a kid… I don’t have a say.”

He was also choosing his words carefully, assessing how much agency he would have in the coming months while also pressing back the voice that pointed out he’d be leaving Emily alone in London.

“Not quite.” Elizabeth took a breath that was tense and delayed, before speaking again. “In this, I am adamant that you would be endangered. If you insist upon furthering your education this year at twelve, I will attempt to arrange for tertiary tutoring or, if necessary, campus classes with you remaining here at Winfield to live. Perhaps an assistant to attend class with you. However, I will not support your mother’s insistence that you could apply for a favoured college in the States. While I understand that you have preferences, as does she, the universities here are equally prestigious without you being far from home and lacking a support system at an age where you simply cannot be that unsupervised—and I will take legal steps to posit that your mother’s judgement is impaired in this matter.”

Spencer stared at her, all of that racing around in his mind. If he picked leaving school, his mom and Elizabeth were going to fight, this he could tell. Plus, he’d have to study away from Emily—especially since she was moving up to secondary next year—even if he remained in London. And he’d have to try all new things, which was terrifying to consider.

And he didn’t even really know what he wanted to learn yet anyway.

“Twelve is still a child,” he said finally with certainty. He wasn’t done being a child yet—not when there was so much left he wanted to learn before childhood ended. “Maybe thirteen will be better?”

Elizabeth smiled at him, relieved despite herself. “I agree entirely,” she said, reaching for the phone in order to call Diana. “Perhaps next year. In the meantime, I’ll discuss with your teachers about how they can challenge you.”

And that was that; for the next year at least, Spencer would remain at school, with Emily.


	11. Seventy-Three Minutes

Seventy-three minutes of Emily’s twelfth birthday was spent in terror.

It began with them being picked up from school by Rotten Rossi himself, who was finishing up his last week of assignment and distracted by the thought that he was leaving behind the woman he was determined to marry. Maybe she could be persuaded to marry him anyway… a whirlwind romance, Hayden Rossi… it sounded lovely…

They weren’t to return home, he told them as they sat together in the backseat with Emily busting to talk about eighth grade, which was filled with boys who were _older_ than her and so much cooler than the boys in the lower grades. Instead, they were going to the Embassy to see Elizabeth, as a treat for her birthday. Emily didn’t think it was that much of a treat. She’d been an embassy brat since birth—they weren’t that interesting. Spencer, in comparison, _was_ interested. He liked seeing the embassy. And Rossi was excited for a whole different kind of reason, all of them very much related to the cause of him having been sent to London in disgrace in the first place.

But when they reached the London Embassy, Elizabeth was in a meeting. Into her office they were piled, Spencer practising magic tricks with his deck of cards—he really was getting very good—and Emily drawing in her math book while Rossi practised proposals in his head, sitting by the door and tapping his shoe on the floor. The room was silent except for the snick snick of Spencer’s cards and Emily humming under her breath as her pencil scribbled away.

The seventy-three minutes began with a bang.

The _boom_ outside the embassy was loud enough that the windows rattled in their frames, both children jerking up to stare wide-eyed at the panes as the sound echoed hollowly through them. Rossi leapt to his feet, startled for a moment, before smoke began billowing up from outside.

“Get up, quick,” he told them, grabbing Emily’s arm and hauling her behind him. “We’re evacua—”

But the alarm sounded, a whoop whoop whoop, and he swore because that wasn’t the evacuation noise at all: it was the alarm for lock-down, which meant one thing.

There was an active threat on the premises.

“What’s that?” Emily gasped, trying to wiggle out of his grip. Spencer was still kneeling on the floor, his cards spilled around him and his eyes huge behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Is it the terrorists? Are they coming for me on my _birthday?”_

She sounded almost excited by the prospect. Rossi shook his head at this, letting go of her.

“Under the desk, both of you,” he ordered them. When he spoke like this, neither of them argued, just scuttled underneath Elizabeth’s desk and peered out as people in the hall ran past and other people outside screamed, sirens beginning to wail. Rossi moved first to the door, locking it and putting a chair against the handle, before darting to the windows to lower the shades. Once that was done, he switched the light off and moved to a corner of the room and, as Emily watched with awe, slipped a gun from a holster on his leg.

“You’re not allowed to have that in London,” she whispered, feeling Spencer’s fingers bite into her arm as he trembled behind her. The sirens were getting louder. “Does Mom know you have that?”

“I have a permit,” Rossi grunted, ignoring them after that as he checked and double-checked his weapon’s readiness. Silence had fallen in the hallway, broken only by the occasional whoop whoop of the alarm continuing. “Now, be quiet.”

For that first moment, neither of them was really too scared. It was _exciting_ , actually—turning twelve was so much more thrilling than eleven! And Rossi was with them, so they were—

There was another boom, and this one didn’t sound like it was outside. Shortly after, they heard more bangs—not explosions.

“Are they guns?” Emily asked Rossi, who didn’t answer, just fumbled with his radio and tried to switch to the right channel, getting nothing but static with every twist of the dial. Suddenly, Emily remembered that her mom was here too: she thought of a lot of things in that second, most of them her mom being in the explosion or dying or being shot or—

Rossi was focused completely on his radio when he heard it: the soft whimper of a terrified child. He looked up, almost for a moment looking around for a _different_ child than the unflappable Emily—but it was Emily he found huddled back in the wooden safety of the desk, Spencer still tucked behind her and her eyes rapidly filling with tears. Even as Rossi looked at her, Spencer realised that she was crying and, with that, seemed to take it as a sign that their situation was more dire than he’d imagined.

Rossi quickly realised that he was about to have two hysterical children on his hands if he didn’t do something.

“Spencer,” he rasped in a whisper, making sure to press his finger to his mouth so they knew not to speak loudly in response. “Show Emily your magic tricks—but silently. Can you do that?”

Spencer nodded tearfully, sliding an arm out from under the desk and dragging as many of his cards as he could manage towards himself. But his hands were shaking too much for sleight of hand, dropping the cards more often than he was conjuring them. Emily watched him mutely, her hands over her mouth and eyes going bigger with every second as her face reddened, like she was trying so hard not to cry that she’d forgotten the need to breathe. It wasn’t working.

Fuck, thought Rossi, as there was a quick burst of more gunfire and then silence. Spencer began to cry. Emily made a noise like she was hurting.

“What is it?” he snapped, abandoning his corner to crawl over there, bracing his back to the desk so they were still hidden behind him but he could lean around and speak to them. “What’s wrong? We’re safe in here—”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Emily sobbed quietly.

Fuck, he thought again.

Spencer began to hiccup. Outside, sirens yelled more, blue and red showing through the cracks in the blinds. And Rossi’s radio remained silent, a jammer active somewhere on the vicinity.

“Can you hold it?” he asked her.

She went to nod before shaking her head, before turning that into a cautious shrug. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’m _scared._ And it pinches. Are you going to shoot someone?”

“No, I’m not,” he said quickly. “Because no one is going to find us in here. Hear that? Those sirens? That’s the police coming—they’re going to catch whoever is setting off those explosives and then they’re going to come in and get us. You watch. Five minutes, max.”

They nodded, looking unconvinced.

“If we get shot, will we die?” Emily asked suddenly, touching her hand to her stomach like she was imagining it. “I saw someone die on a movie from being shot.”

“What if they set a bomb off under us?” Spencer said, looking at the floor below them. “We’d fall down and die…”

“I don’t _want_ to die.” Emily’s lip trembled dangerously. “I want my mom. Is my mom going to die too?”

Fuck, Rossi thought for the final time, and then he made his choice. He holstered his gun; if anyone came in here shooting, they were pretty fucked anyway, so his best chance was to try and make sure no one came in here—and to do that, he needed them quiet and _calm_. And in under the desk he crushed himself, wiggling in until he was safely under there, hooking an arm around Spencer and letting the boy nuzzle in close, small fingers biting into his shirt. Invitation to cuddle accepted, Emily rocketed up onto Rossi’s lap, clinging like a koala with her face buried in his shoulder. One arm around Spencer, the other holding Emily still, Rossi settled in to wait—wishing occasionally that his charges were actually six, because they’d all have a hell of a lot more leg room if they were still that little.

 

Thirty minutes in, the panic in the room had settled to a tense silence, Emily wiggling constantly. A bathroom disaster was imminent, and Rossi had found that at least _some_ of Elizabeth’s fretting over Emily being a proper lady had stuck, since Emily had been utterly horrified by his suggestion that she pee in the pot plant. But the short of it was that the situation hadn’t ended, and he was beginning to suspect had turned into a hostage crisis. Not the IRA’s style, but then, they weren’t the only terrorist organisation lashing out at Western advances right now, even if they were the likeliest in this context. They were safest in here until the situation had defused.

And what did the kids like more than learning about things that should be horrifying to them?

“Want to know what I do at home?” he asked in a last-ditch effort to distract Spencer from whatever terrible end his brain was cooking up and Emily from her pinching bladder. They nodded blankly, not really paying attention by this point. “Well, I hunt serial killers.”

He’d swear later that he actually heard their little necks crink with how fast they snapped around towards him.

“Like Jack the Ripper?” Emily asked, finally ceasing to wiggle.

“Well, yeah. Like Jack the Ripper. Do you want to know how we catch them?”

The nods this time were much more enthusiastic.

“We analyse their behaviour, me and my colleague, Gideon. It’s a pretty new technique, but we’re confident it has serious merit, if we can get the brass to listen to us. So we started out by talking to them, just interviewing them, and we started to realises that a lot of their behaviours they have, they share. And I was curious, so I started contrasting and comparing—an arsonist for pleasure versus someone who uses fire as a tool to kill, for example. Want to know what I found?”

More nods, even more feverishly fascinated than before, and Rossi grinned before rambling on. See, look at this. He was _great_ with kids. What was Joy on about?

 

Sixty-five minutes in, there was a disaster. Rossi was still talking when he heard a soft, “Oh no,” from his lap, Emily’s dark eyes lifting to stare at his with nothing but blank horror in them. He paused, wondering what she was so mortified about… and then felt the warmth in his lap.

Fuck, he thought once more.

With Emily’s eyes getting somehow bigger, her skin paling as he watched, he paused and wondered what to do now.

“What’s wrong?” Spencer asked, Emily going even whiter with the realisation that her friend was going to realise she’d had an accident.

“Nothing,” Rossi said rapidly, hugging Emily a little when she began to cry quietly. “Emily’s just cold. Here, let me…” He wiggled out of his jacket—with difficulty, considering he was still under a desk— “Put this on, Emily. It’s so big on you, it’ll cover you completely… nice and warm.”

And Emily gave him a look that made something certain: with that level of gratitude, he knew he was never being called Rotten Rossi again.

That was almost worth being peed on for.

 

Ten minutes after that, Scotland Yard announced themselves at the door: the situation was over and everyone was safe. No casualties, not even the bombers. Rossi carried Emily down and out of there, Spencer clinging to his hand and hurrying to keep up, until they saw Elizabeth’s head among the rest of the crowd who’d been newly evacuated while bomb squads swept the building for any remaining ordinance.

“Mommy!” screamed Emily, launching from his arms and sprinting to Elizabeth with his jacket so long on her that it slapped at the back of her knees. Rossi stood withSpencer and watched as the two embraced, Elizabeth hugging Emily so tight that Rossi was pretty sure she didn’t plan on letting go ever again.

“Spencer, come here, come here,” Elizabeth called, loosening one arm from her daughter and holding it out to him. “Come on. You’re safe now.”

Rossi watched the three of them hug until Elizabeth coaxed them down, leaving them standing there safely in the shadow of a police cruiser as she walked over to him. “Thank you,” she said with a kind of passionate honesty in her voice. “I was… well, thank you. Knowing they were with you was… a relief.”

“Just doing my job,” he responded. “Emily had a, uh…”

Elizabeth’s mouth twitched a bit, glancing at his trousers with her nose twitching. “I’ll have Chambers organise a dry cleaner. The joys of children in life threatening situations… I can’t imagine how much trouble they must have given you.”

“What? Oh.” Rossi looked again at the children, standing there hand in hand and looking around curiously at the bustle of law enforcement around them, like they hadn’t even been scared at all and had no idea what all the fuss was about. “No, they were no trouble at all.”

And this time, he meant it.


	12. Twelve Passes

Nineteen-eighty-three flew by with no thought or care for whether either of the children was quite ready to turn thirteen just yet. After it, it felt as though they’d only just turned twelve—twelve was supposed to be so much more than eleven, especially with how exciting the birthday ushering it in had been.

 

Spring brought loss. The thaw arrived, the woods came back to life around them, and Chambers stopped by their sitting room one day. Emily saw him first, sitting up from where she’d been trying to force two puzzles to become one—in case there was a code hidden in them—and asking him, “What’s wrong?”

He told them. His father had died earlier that week. It was an unhappy moment for them, as they realised that they hadn’t visited their friend for some time now—not in his final few months—and now they would never visit him again. Emily thought that Chambers didn’t seem as sad as he should when something so miserable had happened to him, even though she felt like crying and Spencer was looking down like he did when he was hiding his feelings. Instead, he quite calmly and with his usual bluntness informed them that there would be a funeral service the following week and, with Elizabeth’s permission, they were invited to attend.

Before he left the room with the two grieved children, he paused. For a moment, his brisk countenance broke and a heartbeat of a man without his parents around anymore flickered through. Both Emily and Spencer pulled back from that possibility.

“I want to thank you both,” he said, the mask back in place despite his softer-than-usual words. “You were a great comfort in his last years. I think he missed having children around… anyway, thank you.”

And then he was gone.

It would be the first funeral for a human either of them would attend, standing stiffly by Elizabeth’s side in starched and pressed clothes of black and trying not to cry around so many strangers. And there was nothing about it that really felt like they were saying goodbye to someone they knew, not without his clocks or tall tales or the machine that breathed for him right up until he wasn’t breathing anymore at all, so when they went home that night it was with a strange feeling like they hadn’t really said goodbye to anyone at all. Except, when Spencer went into his room, he found a note on his bed in Chambers’ handwriting: _Dad wanted someone who could appreciate his things to have them. His books and clocks are yours—Elizabeth will hold them in trust until it can be arranged for them to be shipped to your home in the States._

Emily didn’t find anything on her bed because the man had realised that there was very little a girl like her needed except what he’d already given her: someone who talked to her because they wanted to, not because of who her mother was. There was little else materially that mattered more than that—and besides, he’d correctly guessed, most everything Spencer owned she’d likely get her hands on anyway.

And their lives went on without him, with only a pocket-watch, a packet of lockpicks, and the memories of his stories for them to remember him by, for now.

 

Rossi, who never had been Rotten Rossi again after the day at the embassy, had left with only a small scolding from Elizabeth after she’d heard the maids gossiping about his ‘fraternization’ with a French Ambassador. She’d be one of the first to shake her head and sigh when the news filtered through come that June that he’d returned for a glorious summer holiday, in which he’d married that Ambassador—their divorce in the following few months surprising no one except Rossi himself, who by now should probably have realised he was married to the job. But he’d left with a drawing tucked into his pocket that Emily and Spencer had made him, of a wonky hare in thick glasses and a vicious looking blackbird with swords for wings and signed ‘Come visit! Love Fiver and Blackbird’.

He’d miss them.

 

At the end of yet another year of school, the same letter as the last was sent home. Spencer was to be thirteen by the end of the year, no longer twelve, and would Elizabeth consider now allowing him to attend higher education? It did seem pertinent, with the end of the London posting rapidly approaching come November.

“Well?” Elizabeth asked Spencer when he once again found himself sitting before her in the office that had become familiar. “How do you feel about the prospect now?”

He found that he felt very much the same as he had the year before, like he really wasn’t that much older or ready to face something so uncertain, especially when he had so much left planned to do with Emily… they wanted to go back to the Sometimes Homes and check that everything there was still okay and they needed to finish their Blackbird and Fiver stories and they were trying to play every variation of chess that existed in the world together and—

He decided to tell the truth: “I really don’t want to leave.”

Elizabeth nodded, reaching once again for the phone. “Then you won’t,” she promised him, sending him on his way without another word.

And preparations were made.

 

In July, they flew back to the States on a two-week holiday that was every but as amazing as they’d hoped going home would be. The heat assailed them as soon as they stepped from the plane and down onto Seattle soil, Emily winding down the window on the car to try and stick her head out into it.

“The sun!” she yelled at shocked passers-by. “The sun still exists!”

The last that was seen of her by those passers-by was Elizabeth hauling her back into the car by the ribbon around her waist, stockinged feet kicking as she giggled and yelled. Spencer, meanwhile, pressed his cheek to the window on the other side and felt glad to be home.

When they reached the Sometimes Homes, Diana was there waiting, having been released for this period to see her son. As soon as Spencer saw her standing on the steps, he was out of the car, feet barely touching the gravel before he’d launched into her arms. “There’s my boy, there’s my great traveller,” she whispered into his hair, hugging him tight and marvelling over his fine clothes and neat hair. “What’s this on your hip? A pocket-watch! You really are a man out of your time, aren’t you?”

“Mom, you should see, I helped fix a real clock,” he chattered to her, too excited to even slow down and order his thoughts. “And I fixed pipes and a gutter and there was a bomb—”

All of these things he’d written to her about or spoken to her on the phone, but there was something far more exciting about saying them out loud.

Emily wanted a hug too, bouncing up beside them with a half-giggle that turned into a real giggle as Diana obliged her, gathering her into a hug that was just as tight and warm as the one she’d given Spencer. “Oh dear,” Diana said, leaning back and looking at them. “You’ve gotten taller than him. Well, enjoy it while it lasts, dear. His uncle was monstrously long…”

“Oh, he’ll never get taller than me,” Emily asserted. “I’ve made him promise. Look—this is Blackavar, he’s Balthy’s best friend. Isn’t he wild?” The raven was shaken around in front of Diana’s nose, Diana asserting that he did indeed look ‘wild’ and that she remembered him from the last visit, although under a different name.

“Hello, Diana,” said Elizabeth from behind them, gesturing the driver past with their bags. “I trust your travel went well. Shall we tell them before or after they’re settled in?”

Before, it was decided, and the children followed their mothers into the house curiously, past furniture that still had sheets over it to protect it from dust and into the sitting room where they were told to sit politely and wait. What they were told was this: they would not be coming back to the Sometimes Homes in November when they left Winfield house. Instead, they would be travelling to Rome, where they would live while Elizabeth acted in her position there—for another three whole years. They were stunned, both of them counting ahead silently to try and figure out how old they’d be when that finally ended—sixteen! An impossibly old age.

“But Mom,” Emily said with great concern as wistful dreams of her teenage years began to shatter right before her, “That means I’ll be leaving my high school friends behind when I’m _sixteen._ That’s not how that’s supposed to go—in the movies, you’re supposed to always have your high school friends, not just until you’re sixteen! And then I’ll be the new kid back here, and no one _likes_ the new kid in high school! I’ll be a social pariah!”

“You’ll be a social _what_ —excuse me?” Elizabeth spluttered, startled and assuming, correctly, that Spencer had taught her the word and now she was using it as often as she could, in every possible context.

“Rome is even further away from you than London, isn’t it?” Spencer asked Diana doubtfully, not entirely sold on this idea yet either.

“Yes, but think of the _history_ , baby,” Diana assured him. “There’s such beauty in Rome, in your own backyard! This is an incredible opportunity, and we’ve discussed your schooling as well.” The look she gave Elizabeth suggested that that discussion had been fierce between them both, and Spencer wondered just who had compromised more in the end. “The school there has been in contact with Elizabeth and has agreed to arrange college-level education for you while you attend for some of your classes.”

“They do insist that you take all the classes you require for your high school diploma instead of check-boxing you through, but see no reason why you can’t have access to their higher opportunity program too.” Elizabeth smiled a little tightly at him. “So while you’ll be a secondary student, when you do attend college in however many years, you’ll have credits built up that will go towards your degree. It’s a very decent head start to your tertiary education, without the concerns that early attendance to an _adult_ environment bring.”

Diana’s mouth thinned a little, but she didn’t say anything to discredit that statement. “What do you think, Spence?”

“I think…” He paused, picking his words carefully. “I think that would be good?”

Emily breathed out with relief: her friend wasn’t leaving her, not yet. And maybe… maybe not at all, if she had anything to say about it. After all, if they were going to let Spencer leave school early…

Well, who was to say she couldn’t do the same? Then it wouldn’t matter that she had to leave Rome at sixteen and any friends she made there—because she wouldn’t have to go to school back here in America anyway!

That, she decided, was what she’d do, and she silently began to plot.

 

There was something exciting that came with being almost-thirteen that year. Since Rossi was gone and no supervisor had replaced him, and since it had been over a year with them cleaning up after themselves with only a few minor hiccups, Elizabeth noted that the children were very much on the road to independence, which meant…

“I think you’re old enough to be responsible for your own attire,” she informed them as she slid two shiny new books towards them. When they opened them, they found neat rows and columns of grids. Spencer stared, bemused. Emily froze, overjoyed. “I’ve opened you both bank accounts in your names, held in trust by me. Of course, being minors, there are restrictions upon them—spending limits, for one, as well as where and when you can withdraw. Now, the balance in them is at five-hundred right now—”

Spencer choked. Emily began counting, eyes widening. That was _definitely_ more than what Sally at school got.

“—and what you do with that is up to you. Once a month, I will restore the account to the default amount of five hundred. If you empty it, that’s up to you, although every withdrawal will need one of the approved adults to sign off on—which means I will absolutely know what you’re spending it on. Use discretion. Now, understand this—this money means that _you_ are both responsible for buying your own clothing and trinkets. If you choose to spend it all on candy and then you find that you have no warm socks in the winter, that’s your own fault and you’ll have cold feet until the next month—it will be a lesson on prioritising. Spencer, your postage for your letters to your mother will also come out of your money. If you need a withdrawal, you may speak to one of the adults on that list—in the front of your banking books—and they will arrange to fetch it for you. I’ve decided against supplying you with debit cards for your own access to the funds, for now, although that may change if you prove responsible. Understand?”

“Absolutely,” assured Emily with relish, Spencer still frozen with shock.

“And Emily?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“Be _sensible.”_

Spencer really doubted that that was going to happen, despite Emily’s assurances otherwise.

 

Of course, Emily was not sensible, although Spencer appreciated how fast her wardrobe went from drab and girly to filled with jeans and dresses with wild tie-dye patterns, as she tried every style in a desperate bid to find the one she liked the best. His weekends ended up becoming endless shopping trips as she hauled him around clothes stores, driven by the excitement of finally being able to be her own person, and blowing through her account in a single fortnight.

He, on the other hand, a little uncomfortable at suddenly having what he saw as vast wealth at his fingertips, marched himself into Chambers’ office and said, “Could you please help me calculate my monetary needs for the month?”

Chambers, amused by this, did so. Together they worked out in careful detail just how much Spencer would need for his daily letters and the stationary he needed to write them—with Chambers gently suggesting that Elizabeth would not begrudge him a little extra in order to buy a nice book—and then Spencer requested that Chambers withdraw _only_ that amount for him. Once converted, it was barely fifteen pounds. The rest sat untouched.

He did buy his book though, and even got a gift for Emily—a tiny carved raven designed to sit atop the end of a pencil, and very happy with it he was too.


	13. Goodbye Just Spencer and Raptor Emily

It was their last night in London and there was so much to do. As it turned out, having an entire wing to themselves meant that all their belongings were strewn as far throughout that wing as it was possible for them to be, and they’d spent a busy day trying to track down each and every beloved item before it was lost forever to whoever would live here next. Then there was trying to cram everything they wanted with them in Rome into a suitcase, with everything else being set aside to be shipped to the home in Seattle. Emily was taking full advantage of her mother’s absence to fill the ‘Rome’ suitcase with all her new clothes—many of which Elizabeth barely tolerated and most definitely did not approve of—while Spencer sat on the bed and stared at what he had sitting on his lap: their two ragdolls, a little dusty from disuse with their stitched-on smiles almost melancholic.

“What are you doing?” Emily asked, bobbing up from under the bed with a handful of bedraggled socks and a triumphant grin. “We’re supposed to be packing before dinner.”

“Rome’s going to be very different from here, isn’t it?” Spencer asked, staring at the dolls he’d forgotten they had. Was this how it was now? Was he slowly going to forget all the things he’d loved as a child, as they became unimportant to him? Would Balthy be the same one day, just a forgotten toy in the corner of a dusty shelf?

“Of course,” replied Emily. “We’re teenagers now. Everything is going to be different now, you’ll see.” And she flopped onto the bed with him, huffing hair out of her eyes and reaching over to take the Spencer-ragdoll, examining him carefully. “I’ve read a lot of books on the subject of growing up, so I know what to expect.”

“Do you?”

“Yup. _Especially_ dating. That’s probably going to happen a lot. I’m going to get my heart broken by so many boys, and you’ll probably be off breaking girl’s hearts too, and then at the end we’ll realise all we need is each other.”

Spencer frowned. “ _Sweet Valley High_ novels are not an appropriate resource for factual evidence,” he warned her.

“Don’t be silly, of course they are. They’re milestones of growth, you’ll see.”

“Hmm.” Spencer looked down at his lap, remembering a girl with hair as wild as the doll in his lap—the Emily of now wasn’t quite so wild and never climbed trees barefoot, and she brushed her hair all on her own so it was always neat. He couldn’t imagine her now as she’d been when he’d met her, like a little storm rushing through the trees on her way to the next grand adventure.

He missed that girl, and he missed who he’d been as the boy who’d found her.

“After dinner,” he said softly, turning the doll over so he didn’t have to face her false smile any longer, “we should sneak out—one last time. Maybe go see if we can find Mr Fox.”

Emily beamed. She _loved_ when Spencer was the one who decided to be naughty.

“Absolutely.”

 

Dinner was a solemn affair. Spencer was surprised to find that his pork chops were arranged in a smiley mouth, his peas as the hair and potatoes as dolloped eyes. Never before had his dinner been quite so vivid and, when he lifted his napkin, he found candy tucked under there for him. The pink lemonade they were served was extra sugary and their ice cream scoops were even bigger than they’d ever been. Unlike most every other dinner, on this night the staff were to dine with them, and the conversation was light but stilted.

At the end of the dinner, Elizabeth stood and called for silence, thanking everyone who was there for their service over the past three years and wishing them the best for the future. There was a toast—which was exciting for Emily and Spencer, who were given small glasses of wine to toast with, which neither of them was all that sure they liked—before Chambers gave his own small speech, this time to Elizabeth and the two children. He didn’t say much of interest, not to the kids anyway, although there was a small wave of laughter when he referred to Emily as ‘a compelling child’, which she supposed was just a polite way of saying ‘hellion’.

“I’m sorry for flouring your office that time,” she responded in turn, earning another wave of chuckles. “If I’d known you were nice, I probably wouldn’t have. You should smile more.”

Chambers sighed, but toasted her anyway. “To Miss Emily,” he said, earning an eye roll from her—she still didn’t like that name. “And to Master Spencer too, who I am absolutely sure will soon be showing up as one of the greatest minds of our day.”

This caused Spencer to turn quite red in return, ducking his head as the glasses were lifted to him, ignoring Emily kicking at his leg. He guessed that maybe he was going to miss it here, although he’d be glad to never be referred to as ‘Master’ ever again.

 

That night, they crept out. In the early November chill, their breaths fogged in front of their mouths but there was no need for the heavy coats of their first time creeping around the grounds. They knew where they were going—not the manicured-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives lawns, but back to the copse of trees behind it where the ground was thick with fall leaves piled in loose collections ready to be burned. The air smelled woody, wet and like earth, their feet squishing a bit on the lawn they crossed. And they were silent and kept low, their outfits dark once more, because it wouldn’t do to get caught slipping away on this very auspicious night.

“Well, what now?” Spencer asked when they reached the trees, testing the ground until he found a dry rock to sit on before perching upon it. “What should we do?”

Emily was cracking open her backpack, getting out a packet of biscuits and scattering them around before joining him near the rock. She didn’t seem to mind the wet ground, sprawling onto it with no decorum and staring up at the cloudy sky. “I hope Rome has nice weather,” she declared. “Seeing the sky again will be nice.”

Spencer nodded, the two of them watching the yellow moon drift lazily overhead behind a mask of clouds. The night was mostly quiet, beside the occasional distant wooo of an owl. Of course, Emily was the first to get bored with sitting quietly—even if that was the likeliest way of seeing their fox one last time—leaping up and walking in restless circles around Spencer. He ignored her, still placidly watching the sky and wondering what the flight tomorrow would be like, and whether he’d like Rome as much as he’d come to like London…

A whirl of movement caught his eye and he turned to watch Emily spinning in dizzy circles, her jacket billowing out around her as she spun faster and faster and faster. “What are you doing?” he asked curiously.

“Spinning,” was the obvious answer. And then, “Uh oh!” as she tried to slow and instead stumbled in another giddy, last circle before falling to her knees, thick leggings notably damp from the grass now. “Bet you can’t spin as fast as me.”

“I _know_ I can’t,” he answered placidly. “And I’m not being dared to do anything—remember the balancing?”

She did and laughed a little guiltily, flopping back to look up at what he was watching—a break in the clouds where the stars could just be distantly seen glinting away. She wished she could see them clearer. If only she wasn’t so far down on the ground…

“Lift me,” she demanded, leaping up once more and holding her arm out to him to help him up. “I want to see if the stars look different from up higher.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he said uncertainly. Letting her help him upright, he studied her critically, trying to ascertain where he could hold her to give her the best lift without losing his balance. The problem was that she was _longer_ than him, and he suspected also heavier, since her bones weren’t anywhere near as pokey as his.

“Of course you can, I’m not _fat_ and you’re a boy. Boys are supposed to be strong.”

He scowled at her for that. “So? You’re a lot of things that girls aren’t supposed to be—and you get mad when your mom tells you to be more of a _girl_ , so don’t tell me I should be more of a boy.”

Recognising a sore point, she smiled contritely and apologised with a hand on his arm. “Sorry, you’re right. But we can try, can’t we? Here, let me try pick you up first—just like the throwing Rossi taught us, but with less letting go!”

Spencer didn’t like the sound of that, but he barely had time to express his doubts before she’d tried to pick him up how Rossi had shown them and probably forgotten the ‘not letting go’ part, sending him flying. He hit the lawn with an _oomph_ of all his air escaping, wheezing as he tried to both breathe and laugh at the same time.

“Oh no!” sounded Emily over his head, as she really did start laughing. “Sorry!”

“You’ll be lucky if I don’t throw _you_ ,” he warned her, clambering up to his knees and bracing to launch himself at her. Unfortunately, she’d been rough and tumbling before he’d even known tumbling was something kids could _do_ and therefore immediately recognised the danger in his posture, turning and running with a shriek before he chased her. Around the trees they darted, laughing and grabbing at each other, Spencer giving up and throwing leaves at her when he realised that he’d never catch her. Finally, she dropped onto the grass with a groan, panting from exertion as he staggered over and joined her. Both liberally covered in sticks and leaves and clumps of dirt.

“I’m too tired to try lift you now,” he warned her, but she pouted prettily in return and he sighed. “Alright. Stand on the rock and try to climb on my back. _Don’t_ knee me in the spine.”

It took them three tries for her to even get off the ground, Spencer stumbling two broken steps forward before crumpling like a wet paper sack under her weight. Emily went down and rolled, coming to a stop with a whoop of laughter against something firm and warm that looked down at her sternly.

She leapt upright, Spencer’s wheezing giggles ceasing as he looked up and saw what she’d bumped up against.

“Someone said there were fairies tittering down here,” Chambers said sternly, flashlight in hand and eyebrows raised. “Whatever are you both doing? You’re covered in the woods. I do hope you’re not planning on taking that much greenery to Italy with you, I’m not sure they’ll appreciate it.”

They stood in shamefaced silence before Spencer finally gathered the courage to speak.

“We wanted to see our fox one last time,” he admitted, picking leaves from his coat. “But, um. We got distracted.”

“It’s almost _midnight_ ,” Chambers scolded, ramping up to continue the lecture before dragging them back to the house. But they looked at him so woefully that he paused, looking around at the scattered biscuits in the grass and the leaves tossed about everywhere. Finally, he looked towards the lawn, where great piles of leaves could be seen as shadowy mounds on the grass. “Do you want to see what happens to children who sneak outside in the middle of the night?” he asked them.

They stared at him, frozen, until he gestured at them to follow. Which they did, in silence, until he crouched beside the mound of leaves—both children watching him curiously with slightly less worry on their expressions—and gently began to push the pile over.

Out came two startled hedgehogs, snuffling away from him and right over Emily’s shoes as she gasped with excitement.

“Shh,” Chambers warned them, waving at them to sit down and be quiet, which they did. “There’s more.” And there was—as the hedgehogs trundled away, one more popped out of another nest of leaves, blinking sleepily. “We’ve woken them up.”

Quietly and together, the tree of them watched the hedgehogs until they vanished into the grass, back to their leafy dens.

“There,” said Chambers finally, when silence had been returned to the night and the cold air was settling heavier on them, Spencer beginning to shiver. “Not quite a fox, but still quite adequate.”

“I bet Rome doesn’t have hedgehogs,” said Emily sadly.

“If anyone is going to discover hedgehogs in Rome, it’s you,” Chambers informed her. “Of that, I’m convinced. Now, come on. Let’s get you home and de-leafed before you mother realises what you’ve been up to.” Back he walked them, none of them hurrying on this very last night, until they were outside the back doors to Winfield and he was picking leaves from their hair.

“Bye, Mr Chambers,” Emily said finally, pausing before the door before sneaking back upstairs. “Thanks for not telling Mom we snuck out.”

“Thanks for showing us the hedgehogs,” added Spencer.

“You’re very welcome, the both of you,” Chambers told them, pausing before awkwardly crouching to give them both a stiff-armed hug, their reciprocation much more enthusiastic. And the last thing he said to them was something which delighted them both very much, and which neither of them ever forgot: “I’m going to miss you both very much… Raptor Emily and Just Spencer.”


	14. A Rome Adventure

They arrived in Rome in the early hours of the morning, the streets hazy with fog and the world barely awake. In the car, despite the excitement of a whole new land to explore, Emily slept. Spencer, in the centre seat and, unlike her, wide awake, leaned over her carefully to stare out the window, around the patch of fog where her mouth was pressed to the glass. Both Blackavar and Balthy were curled in the crook of her arm, with Spencer holding her free hand with a kind of excitement he didn’t really know how to contain.

They drove through narrow streets with high, brick buildings soaring overhead. Everything looked so old and beautiful in the dawning light, Spencer couldn’t help but think of a city placed down an impossible time ago and then never touched again, as though they were the first people to sweep through it even as doors opened around them and deposited busy people off to their day’s work. Unlike London, here were bright colours, pinks and blues and sandstone yellow, his smile growing as a man in a baker’s outfit spotted him looking and waved excitedly. Unlike the gloomy air of London, Rome felt welcoming—like both it and its people wanted him to come and love their city alongside them.

“I like it here already,” he whispered to Emily, who continued sleeping deeply. Not bothered by this, he allowed himself a small flight of fancy, picking up Balthy and pressing her little plastic nose to the glass so she could see the world around them too.

He suspected that they could be happy here.

 

And here was their new home. Emily, after Winfield House, was unimpressed. No staff lined up to meet them and the looming shadow of the walled villa was, from this side of the imposing gate, not exactly welcoming. Awake now with Spencer bouncing beside her, she settled back into her seat and yawned as they waited for the gates to swing open and the town car to sweep through, taking them up a long drive lined with trees and flowers and shrubs, all wearing their dull autumnal coats.

“This is Villa Taverna,” Elizabeth said suddenly, as though noting that they were finally awake. “It’s to be our home for the next three years, and I’m told there is a tremendous amount of truly priceless art kept within. Do be careful.”

“We’ll be careful, Mother,” Emily replied with zero interest in the art within.

“We promise,” said Spencer with far more surety in his voice. With that said, they followed Elizabeth from the stopped car, leaving their bags for the driver as they stared around at the open courtyard of their new home, the wings of the villa curled around them in a great U shape. Emily looked around, spotting the statues immediately and hauling Spencer over to look at them. A boy and a dog stood on one side of the gate, the other holding a boy and a snake. Emily thought the boy with the snake looked rather dashing. Spencer could see something he liked in the eyes of the one with the dog. Two more statues stood within the courtyard, women holding various objects.

Spencer studied them for a moment. “I think they’re the seasons,” he said finally, narrowing his eyes in thought. “Look, this one has a basket of flowers, don’t you think she looks rather like Spring? And that one—fruits and grapes, like the fall harvest.”

“I think you’re making stuff up as you’re going along,” Emily declared, incorrectly—Spencer was very right. “They’re just ladies with baskets. Art doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sure it does, if you spend enough time looking,” Spencer said dreamily, looking back to the boy with the dog. “Elizabeth, will we have time to explore before we begin school?”

“I’m afraid not,” Elizabeth replied, having stopped to examine the statues herself with her mind in a million places. “The diplomatic sphere in Rome is quite unlike any other, and my stay here will be entirely political in every possible way. Positively Machiavellian.” She paused, seeing both of them staring curiously at her, not quite following. “What I’m saying is that every eye in Rome is upon us within this posting. That means both of you as well as me—I’m not the only Ambassador in Rome, and my work here will be quite different from London. For one, social functions will be far more frequent, which means that you’ll both have etiquette teachers and I will be just as frequently absent. You’ll both also have security details. It was only three years ago that there was a kidnapping from this very villa.”

“I don’t see any security,” Emily stated, looking around curiously.

“I do,” Spencer murmured, eagle eyes spotting cameras blinking in hidden pockets and a guardhouse tucked within the very wall. “What are your expectations of us?” He decided right that moment that whatever they were, he would rise splendidly to the occasion—he absolutely refused to disappoint the woman who was making this life possible, for him and for his mom.

Emily’s mouth thinned into an unhappy line, her shoulders slumped where his were straight.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Elizabeth warned them, waving them towards the front door where the driver was waiting with their bags to be directed to which of the seventeen bedrooms within the residence would be theirs. “For now, remember that you represent your home country every minute that you are here—do not disappoint not only me, but those who look to you to be the face of America within Rome.”

Spencer was awed by the responsibility, determining to ensure he was the very best kind of face America could want—even if his face was very odd and not quite symmetrical, with his wonky glasses. To anyone looking, he would be _immaculate_ in his duties.

Emily, for the first time ever, wished there would be less attention placed upon her.

 

They were given their schedules at lunch that day, seated at a long stately dinner table looking around at the ornate furnishings and art around them. The maids who served them, unlike the ones at Winfield who they could tell had been there a long time and were comfortable with the surroundings, curtseyed quickly and hurried on their way. When Elizabeth arrived to find them already eating their meals in a sleepy kind of tired, all jet-lagged, there was a woman hurrying after her with her arms full of papers.

“Alessia, this is my daughter, Emily, and my foster, Spencer.” Elizabeth bustled up, inviting Alessia to take a seat, the woman looking frazzled behind thick glasses with her black hair pulled into a bun that barely looked contained. “Children, this is my secretary, Alessia. Emily, secretary in Italian.”

Emily swallowed her spoonful of soup, mumbling, “Segretaria,” without lifting her eyes from the bowl.

Elizabeth looked to Spencer next, who choked and quickly spluttered out the first greeting that came to mind, panicked by the on-the-spot tension of the moment when he wasn’t confident in his fluency: “Buongiorno,” he managed, blinking rapidly as Elizabeth nodded—clearly expecting more. “Uh, mi chiamo, um… Spencer?”

Emily’s foot tapped his. “Piacere,” she whispered.

“Piacere,” he added weakly, feeling his face flush hot as the woman smiled uncertainly at him.

“Piacere mio, Spencer,” she said, her accent slight. “And you, Emily. My apologies, I am not good with children’s ages—how old are you both?”

“They will be fourteen next year,” Elizabeth answered for them. “And expected to answer for themselves from now on in social situations—in Italian where it is appropriate, which in Rome would be…?”

Emily huffed, poking her soup moodily with her spoon. Spencer eyed her, recognising one of her terrible moods descending. “Always,” she muttered. “Unless instructed otherwise.”

“Indeed. From now on, I expect that we carry our conversations in Italian. The practise will do you both good.”

Spencer wilted. He wasn’t _good_ at this… but, he thought, he had to _get_ good. This was a part of being thirteen now—people had expectations. In Italian, haltingly and with his accent truly atrocious, he managed, “We understand,” earning a thin smile from Elizabeth.

“Now, with that done—Emily, eat your soup, don’t aggravate it—here are your schedules. Take a moment to examine them before we discuss another matter of importance.”

They took theirs, Emily first noting that they were to begin at the International School in a week, a month into term—second, she noted that school didn’t end when she expected it to. “We’re taking extra classes?” she asked, wilting. Spencer had already opened the yearly planner their weekly schedule was affixed to, finding inside a packet of Holy Days of Obligation and reading it curiously. “What for? Spencer’s got brains enough for all of Italy.”

“Spencer has,” Elizabeth corrected with a sharp glare. “As my dependants, you’ll both be invited to various functions throughout my term here. I expect you both to not only uphold our name, but also to exceed all expectations of American children—you will be well presented, able to hold your own in relevant and appropriate conversation, and appear both intelligent and educated. You’ll note that two of your lessons weekly are devoted to art history and religious affairs—pay careful attention in them. A third is Italian. If you achieve fluency, that can be negotiated to a language more of interest to you, perhaps one you already have a foundational knowledge of. Emily, with that said, your First Communion—I’ve put it off far too long due to your father’s disinterest and my schedule, but it’s become pressing.”

“Oh no,” said Emily, giving up on her soup as the truth of the next three years sunk in: growing up was going to be _awful._

“Oh yes. We’re having it next month, and I’ll assign someone to help you prepare for that. Spencer, your mother is adamant that any religious undertakings you’re involved with are undergone only with your full consent and understanding that you are not under any pressure to attend. With that said, it would present a more palatable front if you attend Mass with us each week.”

Emily was still grouchy beside him, muttering something about being too old for Jesus to want her now anyway, but Spencer ignored her as he nodded firmly. “That’s fine,” he said, smiling a little tightly at the prospect of even more newness. “Uh. Do I have to confess?”

“What would _you_ have to confess?” Emily asked with an unladylike snort. “Dear Father, please forgive me because today I only thought about math for eighty percent of the day instead of one thousand percent, therefore I’ve been slothful?”

Alessia’s mouth twitched, but Elizabeth didn’t look impressed. “This is exactly the kind of behaviour I’m concerned about, Emily,” she warned. “You need to take this all very seriously, because the people around you—very important and distinguished people—expect absolute deference from children in regard to these matters, no matter your personal feelings.”

“Sorry, _Mother_ ,” Emily shot back fast, standing with a flick of her hair and a wince as though she’d hurt herself with her drama. “I’ll be sure never to speak out of turn about _important_ things and always look as pretty as a little doll like me should look. Can I go?”

“Emily—” Elizabeth barked, but Emily was already gone. Spencer found himself alone at the big table, looking awkwardly from one woman to the other.

“May I be excused?” he said finally, quickly repeating himself in Italian when Elizabeth sighed at him, pressing her fingers to her eyes. “I want to go and read my schedule properly, in order to be… prepared.”

“Yes, yes, go.” Elizabeth pulled her own paperwork towards her, pushing her untouched meal aside. “Don’t go to Emily’s room. Leave her to sour on her own, like a bad apple. I’m tired of her temper being validated by your kindness.”

Feeling thoroughly scolded, Spencer went—directly to Emily’s room, of course, tapping on the door until she finally let him in.

“You’re welcome,” she said, looking tired and miserable, her eyes dark shadows that he winced to look at. “She’ll be so mad with us that she’ll leave us alone all afternoon now so we can _sleep.”_

“I’m not tired,” he said, because he wasn’t—he wanted to ask her a million questions about this whole new life he’d had dumped into his lap, that he expected wasn’t going to be anything at all like London. After all, there they’d had a Rossi—here, they had a man at the end of their hall who barely even looked at Spencer as he’d scuttled past. “Want to read with—”

“No,” she snapped, crawling into bed and curling into a little ball, her eyes burning. “I don’t. I don’t want to do _anything_. I don’t feel well and everything is horrible and I want to _sleep_.”

“Oh,” said Spencer. He stood there for a moment feeling out of place, before inching to the door. “Should I leave?”

“No,” said the blankets angrily. “I don’t want you to go.”

Oh, he thought. He looked around, finally walking over to the curtains and pulling them closed. “I’ll just read here then,” he announced, settling on a weird flat couch and opening his schedule.

“Hmph,” said the blankets.

And there they stayed, Emily hurting in more ways than one and Spencer wondering whether she was ever going to be happy with him ever again.

 

Emily woke feeling very strange. Spencer was still reading in the corner of her room, quietly turning pages at speed, and she felt like her insides had shifted very slightly out of place before balling up into a tight kind of knot deep in her belly. She wiggled about, wincing a little at the way it twinged and pulled, before freezing.

She’d wet the bed. Around her legs, the sheets were all wet, her thighs sticky. How _could_ she? She’d gone to bed all angry about being treated like a child still, with schedules and expectations and everything awful, righteous and sure that she was basically an adult now—but she’d wet the bed, like a _toddler_ , and worse: Spencer was in the room. What if he smelled it and knew?

Terror slamming home and making her almost sob, she curled tighter and wondered what to do, trying to not rustle the sheets as she wiggled her skirt up and touched her legs to see if she was just imagining the wet. But she wasn’t, her fingers coming away damp, and she lifted her hand and stared. And stared. And stared.

“Spencer,” she whispered, hearing the pages turning sound stop momentarily before he must have thought the whisper was his imagination and started up again. “Spencer. Get out.”

The pages stopped, his feet hitting the ground as he did the very _opposite_ of what she wanted and walked towards the bed. “What?” he asked in Italian, frustrating her—why did he have to be so _obedient?_ “Emily, what’s wrong?”

“Please get out,” she whispered, the cold terror beginning to bloom into a hot panic. “Get out get out get out get out _get out!”_ She launched out of the covers with a gasp, keeping them wrapped around her legs and staring at his stunned face. “I don’t want you to see!”

“See _what?”_ he asked, in English now. “I don’t see…” And he stopped talking, now staring at her hand that she’d forgotten about and that she hadn’t carefully covered, at the blood on her fingers. He went white with fear, scaring her more—suddenly she remembered the girls at school talking about a movie they’d seen where the character had done this, bled like this, and she’d gone _mad_. Everyone had taunted her so horribly that she’d gone crazy and _died_ and maybe Emily was going to go crazy and die just like her or maybe she’d bleed and bleed until she had no blood—

Emily began to cry, Spencer still staring.

“I’m going to _die_ ,” she wailed, curling her knees up and feeling the sobs turn from terror to a deep, hitching hysteria. “This is it, I’m dead, I’m dying, I’ll never make a friend again because they’re going to yell at me in the showers like _Carrie_ oh no oh gosh oh no—”

Cold touched her legs and she screamed at him angrily, no real words sounding, as he’d lifted up the blankets to look. “Sorry, sorry,” he rambled, dropping them fast and backing away. “I didn’t know what was happening! Um, Em—”

There was a knock on the door, both of them freezing. In Italian, a deep male voice called their names and asked if they were okay, the door beginning to open.

“We’re fine, get out!” screamed Emily.

“We’re playing a game,” Spencer added quickly. “Emily’s a dragon and I’m slaying her.”

The door paused before closing, Emily muffling her sobs in the blankets and Spencer still stunned. They listened in silence for the heavy tread of the guard returning to his post, before continuing their discussion in much quieter voices, although no less frenetic on Emily’s behalf.

“It’s okay,” Spencer soothed her carefully, his brain working in overdrive. “It’s just a mammal thing, seriously—even the book about hares talked about it.”

“I’m not a _hare,_ Spencer,” Emily hissed furiously. “I am clearly bleeding to death!”

“You’re in oestrus—”

“No, I’m not! What is that?”

Spencer paused, thinking about the hare book again. “Well, it’s when the female is receptive to having babies, I think.”

Emily’s mouth dropped open, her eyes going comically wide.

“Actually, I think that might just be an animal thing…” Spencer frowned, reading back over the book in his head. “But it did mention bloody vaginal discharge so, maybe?”

“Oh no,” Emily whimpered. “I’m going to have _litters.”_

Spencer didn’t quite think that was accurate, but he didn’t have enough information to correct her. Instead, he clung to what he did know—words—which was a mistake: “It’s derived from a Latin word that means frenzy, often associated with madness and torment and irrational drives—Emily?”

Emily was sobbing so hard she was hiccupping now, giving up all semblance of being calm. Even as she howled, impressing the guards outside who assumed she was being an excellent dragon for their game, she felt another flush of _something_ gross and horrible move out of her, an impossible to ignore sensation like she’d completely lost control of her body.

“Please stop crying,” Spencer tried frantically, looking around before diving for her still unpacked suitcase. “We can change your clothes and wash them and no one will know.”

“I don’t care about the clothes,” Emily wailed, although she did, very much. “I don’t want to have litters! I don’t want things inside me and I don’t want my body doing stuff I didn’t tell it to and I don’t want to go crazy and get blood poured all over me in front of everyone! No one can ever know about this, Spencer, _no one!_ In fact, you need to forget it ever happened or that I even exist and just leave me here _forever._ ”

Although most of this had been cried all in the one garbled breath, Spencer thought he got the gist of it—not that it made much sense, because none of that had been covered in his biological reproduction of the therian mammal book. In fact, he was starting to think that maybe he needed a new book, a _better_ book, one more suited to this situation—and _fast_.

“I can’t move, I’ll bleed on the _floor_ ,” Emily finally gasped with absolute melodrama, tumbling back into the bed and whimpering when the wet sheets below her made a noise at the impact.

Spencer took a breath. Then another. Then he looked around and put his brilliant mind to work.

“I have a plan,” he announced, taking a deep breath and tossing his plans to be the best thirteen-year-old boy in Rome, at least in terms of behaviour. “But we’re going to have to break a lot of rules.”

Emily’s head popped up, tears already drying. “I’m listening,” she said.

 

Stage one involved toilet paper: a lot of it. Spencer walked out of the room whistling innocently, earning a strange stare from the guard as he ambled over to the bathroom, even adding a nonchalant wave. Nothing to see here, no one being naughty… but as soon as he was in with the door closed behind him, he was quickly filling his pockets as much as he could without it becoming obvious, pausing a second before lifting his sweater and wrapping even more around his stomach and chest like he was a mummy. Once the sweater was down over it, he looked a little poofier than usual, but nothing noticeable. Once that was done, he darted back to Emily’s room, finding her sitting on the pile of stripped bedsheet looking glum with her skirt spotted with red.

“That’s not so bad,” Spencer said. “Maybe we don’t need to—”

Emily tweaked the skirt around her waist without it taking it off, wordlessly showing him the seat.

“Oh,” he finished weakly. “Well, maybe we will have to hide the skirt too… only until tonight, then we can sneak down to wherever the laundry is in this place. I bet they’ve got a giant one, since they have so many bedrooms.”

“I bet,” Emily said miserably. Her stomach was beginning to cramp with a horrible kind of regularity and she felt all tired and flushed and hot. If this was puberty, she didn’t want it—not the bleeding, not the pain, not the _litters_.

“Okay, so.” Spencer charged ahead with the plan since that was really the only way he knew how to help. “I got a ton of toilet paper—use that for now, just, um… you know.”

Emily stared at him blankly.

“Fill your, you know… underwear,” he stammered, his cheeks burning along with the rest of him. “Clean ones, so they don’t get marked. And we’ll hide the stuff that has blood on it… somewhere. Maybe in the closet, until we can sneak it down to wash—I know some chemicals that will help, I read them in a book about serial killing. And then we do part two, which is where the rule breaking comes in.”

“And what’s that?” Emily asked, kind of impressed at just how much toilet paper Spencer had snuck into her room on his body, as he was still unwinding it as they were talking.

“Well, we go buy you some… something. For that.” Spencer pointed to her crotch, ignoring her warning glare. “At the shops. I’m sure they can help.”

Emily didn’t think that sounded plausible, but Spencer was still talking.

“I mean, we’d have to sneak out… past the security guards, so we’d have to somehow get out without _any_ of them noticing, probably over a wall. And then we have to find a shop in a city we don’t know. And I don’t know the Italian word for… I don’t even know the _English_ word for what we need, so…”

“What you’re saying,” Emily said slowly, already beginning to feel better, “is that it will be a real adventure?”

Spencer, with a grin, nodded.

 

The wall had turned out not to be as difficult a concept as they’d expected, with the help of a sturdy tree. Emily, rustling with every step and the toilet paper rubbing something fierce against the inside of her thighs, was quite giddy with the adrenaline of leaping a wall like real assassins. Down the narrow streets they wandered, peering around for something that looked like a store.

Spencer was holding the money Elizabeth had given them when she’d exchanged their pounds for lira, studying it carefully. He wasn’t entirely sure of the exchange rates, but he was sure this was enough. That was another book he was going to find: as well as a book on the human processes of puberty, he also needed one on currencies of the world. Emily’s reading was better than his was for Italian, so he left the store-spotting to her, until one was found.

It was a strange experience stepping into the store with her and finding themselves surrounded by shelves of almost-familiar products in Italian instead of English. By now, his Italian was good enough that he recognised a lot of the words he was looking at—but his brain still conceptualised them as foreign and it was weird, seeing words he knew right next to words he might know right next to words he’d never seen before.

“Uh,” he said, looking around. “Where to now?”

“We walk up and down the aisles until something looks like what you’d use to stop bleeding to death,” Emily decided, marching off to do just that. “Maybe by the band-aids…”

But the band-aids offered no solutions, nor did the toilet paper aisle. Puzzled, they walked aimlessly until they found themselves back by the shampoos, Spencer’s shoulders feeling tight and worried as he fretted over how long they’d been gone.

“May I help you?” asked the shopkeeper in Italian behind them, looking down at them firmly. Behind him, one of the girls who worked there was also lingering, looking from Spencer to Emily with her eyebrows raised.

Spencer looked at Emily, who looked right back at him in turn, as they tried to decide who would be the one to try to describe what they needed—and how they could do so without telling them why they needed what they needed.

Emily took a breath. She could do this—and without letting slip her secret.

 

They hadn’t done it.

Spencer sat on the stoop outside the shop, staring into the plastic carry bag filled with what they’d ended up buying. Eight packets of band-aids and a roll of bandages—after Emily had asked for something for if you were bleeding to death—as well as a small packet of baby diapers—Spencer’s fault, as he’d gone for the closest Italian word he could think of involving bodily functions—and two chocolate bars, given to them out of pity, they assumed, for being hopeless and teary.

“At least we got chocolate,” Spencer said glumly, offering Emily a bite of his. Emily shook her head, feeling like she was going to cry again despite being more angry than sad. And, even as she thought that, a terrible premonition struck her as well as a surety: she thought that maybe the toilet paper might be leaking.

“I wish I was dying,” she whispered, hugging her arms to herself and feeling very alone. Spencer looked up at her as she stopped hugging herself, instead putting her hands behind her back and trying to cover her butt with them. “This is horrible.”

“Maybe they have a bathroom,” he offered. “You can get more toilet paper? Enough to get us home and maybe enough until your mom comes back from the embassy and we can—”

“No!” Emily had never been more serious about anything, stomping her foot for emphasis. “We can’t tell her! She wouldn’t understand!”

Spencer looked at her foot and swallowed. She looked too.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” she declared, spotting red on her white sock that her skirt wasn’t long enough to cover. “Are you sure I’m not bleeding to death?”

“Well, I mean, I _was_. But that just seems like an excessive amount of blood for a natural process—I mean, I’m sure, oh no, Emily don’t cry again.” But too late, she was crying again, and he was pretty sure that if puberty was half as horrible as this for him, he didn’t want a bar of it. On the bright side, at least he wouldn’t have to sneak his bedding down to the laundry in the middle of the night to wash blood from it—of that he was certain. Boys didn’t need to be receptive to babies.

He could never tell Emily how relieved to be a boy he was right then, _never._

Finally, he stood. “I’m going to ask about a bathroom,” he lied, walking into the store and right up to the girl working the checkout.

She looked down at him. “Still bleeding to death?” she asked in Italian, trying not to smirk.

With his face burning red and pretty certain that even he felt like crying now too, he shook his head and tried again.

 

“Assorbente,” said Spencer as he stepped out of the shop. Emily looked up at him, noting his bright red cheeks and ears. “That’s the word. Assorbente.” With that, he handed her a paper bag that she opened and peered into, finding two bright packages filled with something soft and pad-like, another packet of what she thought might be some kind of wipe, some kind of over-the-counter painkiller, a packet of bi-carbonate soda with a partially English label, and another chocolate bar. “There. She didn’t charge us, I think she felt bad for us not knowing the word…”

He wasn’t looking at her, clearly still trying to deal with how embarrassed he was, so Emily just hugged the bag close and looked at him instead.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he mumbled, pointing across the square. “She said there’s a bathroom over there. And that you’re definitely not bleeding to death.”

Oddly, that was a comfort.

 

They made it home without anyone noticing they’d even been missing. Late that night, when they were supposed to be sleeping, they could be found sitting down in the ginormous laundry they’d discovered in the depths of the house, watching the water thump round and round while Spencer played with the bi-carb paste he’d made to help draw the stains out.

“I don’t think I want to grow up,” Emily said glumly, drawing her knees closer and scowling because the pad made her feet sweaty and dirty and a little bit like she was wearing a diaper.

“If it helps, I’m going to ask to go to the library sometime this week and get books so we know what’s coming,” Spencer said, putting down his bi-carb paste. “No more terrible surprises.”

“No, just terrible _expectations_. Today would have still been awful, even if I’d known it was coming…”

That Spencer couldn’t argue against. After all, he hadn’t been the one bleeding into his sock.

“But we did it,” he said finally, nudging her with his shoulder. “All by ourselves, we dealt with it. That’s a part of growing up too—not needing other people to help us with our problems. I bet we can handle all kinds of things by ourselves now, especially since your mom was so sure she’s going to be busier than ever.”

Emily smiled. That _was_ a bonus. “You’re right, we don’t need anyone,” she declared. “No parents who are too busy, no friends who we’re just going to move away from—we have each other. And we can face anything, right? Without telling _Mom._ ”

“Right,” agreed Spencer, certain that there was nothing that could be as terrible as today—and if they’d dealt with today, they could deal with anything.

“But I’ve been thinking,” Emily said slowly, her eyes still watching the washing going round and round and round. “We’re not going to be that together for much longer, are we?”

This was news to Spencer, who stared worriedly at her, wondering if she knew something terrible that he didn’t.

But Emily continued: “Because you’re going to be off to college one day soon, you’re too smart not to. And I know all our schools keep talking about it—one day Mom’s going to say yes.”

“I mean, she might, but if _I_ don’t,” Spencer began, because the idea of leaving Emily behind and going somewhere new and alone and surrounded by strangers was abhorrent to him when he had so much he loved here.

Emily interrupted fiercely: “No! Spence, see—that’s the problem! You’re super smart, you _should_ go to college early, but you’re too… shy. And you don’t want to leave me which makes sense because I don’t want to leave you either, I don’t know who I’d rather be friends with than you. So there’s only one option.”

“Which is?”

Emily smiled, smug with the knowledge that this was the greatest idea she’d ever had, possibly ever would: “We _both_ go to college,” she announced. “Together! I’ll just have to work a bit harder, that’s all.”

And, to Spencer, that sounded like the very greatest idea he’d ever heard.


	15. Emily at a Crossroads

Emily returned home the Sunday before her first communion with a thoughtful kind of air around her. Spencer greeted her as cheerfully as though they didn’t have bucketloads of homework awaiting them, showing her the study plans and boards he’d drawn up in order to maximise their learning efficiency, if they were going to get Emily up to his level. Or, if not to his level, at _least_ to a midpoint they could meet at. Spencer was sure he could delay leaving until Emily was leaving—and she was smart, much smarter than a lot of the other kids at school, so he was sure with some hard work that it wouldn’t be long.

After all, they did everything the same and he was pretty sure their brains were very alike, since they liked a lot of the same stuff, so in theory there wasn’t that much stopping her from being him. He wasn’t special or anything, he’d just had more time to read.

“So if we use Sunday afternoons to jump forward in our term work then we should, in theory, be able to reach a point where we’ve covered everything assignment-wise and—” he rambled on, pointing to each carefully colour-coded box.

Emily, who’d been standing there fiddling with her Sunday dress, suddenly blurted out what was on her mind: “Do you think I’ve got sin?”

Spencer blinked. “Uh,” he said, completely thrown. “I don’t know? Is that something you can ‘get’? I thought it was something you do.”

Emily shrugged, still picking at her ribbons, nose scrunched a bit. “The other girls I’m taking communion with next week are all a lot younger than me,” she said, unbunching her hand and revealed a scrunched-up brochure she’d been holding. Spencer took it curiously, unfolding it to find the title _Sacrament of Penance: Individual Reconciliation._ “Before we can receive First Eucharist, we have to do something called a sacrament of reconciliation, which Mom says isn’t just about right and wrong, it’s about sin as well, but I don’t think I’ve sinned… I’m a _child_. But I’m older than them and I know a lot more about what’s good and bad, so, maybe?”

“I don’t know,” Spencer said honestly. “It’s your faith, Em, not mine. I don’t really…”

“Mom spends an awful lot of her time trying to ‘fix me’,” Emily said finally, still staring at the brochure as Spencer opened it and began to read. “And now I have to confess sin so I can have a relationship with Jesus, who’s supposed to love me no matter what, even though I’ve only got thirteen years to have been doing bad things. Don’t you ever feel like maybe we’re just born needing fixing…”

“No,” said Spencer, who was adamant about that. “I don’t think it’s like that at all. I bet if you asked your priest he’d be able to explain it better than I can.”

Emily thought about that. “I don’t think I can go to him,” she said finally, slowly. Emily, over the past month of church being a lot more than just showing up to keep her mother happy, had suddenly realised something about herself that she wasn’t entirely sure she was happy about. It was only going to cause her pain, she was sure—but she was far too used to having her own mind to ignore it. “And I don’t think I can confess what I need to confess.”

“What’s that?” Spencer asked.

“They asked me today if I have an understanding of God’s place in my life, if I speak to Him when I’m feeling afraid or lost…” Emily shrunk into herself a little, because she knew enough to know that lying was definitely a sin… and she’d lied then. “And I said yes…”

Spencer didn’t answer, because he—correctly—suspected what was coming and—incorrectly—thought it might be his fault. He couldn’t know that this was a revelation Emily had been always on track to have, having witnessed far too admissions from her mother that their religious obligations were more from a sense of duty than any real belief to have cemented the faith that the other children in her parish community had.

“But I don’t, not really,” Emily finished firmly, becoming surer every time she considered it further. “I _don’t_ have an understanding of God in my life. I don’t think he’s there—and I don’t talk to him when I need help, I talk to _you._ You’re real and here, you can help. What can God do? But if I tell them that, they won’t let me take the communion… and then Mom will be so mad with me.”

“Oh,” said Spencer.

Emily nodded glumly. “Oh,” she agreed.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Spencer knew that sometimes people just wanted to talk out their problems and be heard, that was something he’d slowly been learning—but Emily was a fixer. If she was telling him this, she probably wanted to do something about it.

But she didn’t know. “Keep it hidden,” she decided finally, adding it to the growing list of things they ‘couldn’t and wouldn’t tell Elizabeth’. “Maybe I’ll understand more after, like an epithet kind of thing.”

“Epiphany,” Spencer corrected, not so sure that she was right but willing to go along with her anyway.

 

The next Sunday was a vivid event in both their minds. The actual act of the Holy Communion seemed to pale in the fuss around it, as Emily was dutifully dressed in a white gown and veil. Spencer in his nicest suit and tie stuck close to her as they walked into the church, stopping her from leaning on the brick wall when Elizabeth moved away for just a moment to speak to the priest. There were other girls there in their gowns and veils, but none as pretty as Emily, Spencer thought. He was quite startled by how she looked today, unable to stop himself from looking at his friend and finding her quite unlike ever before, her dark hair styled by a woman hired just for the day and pinned up beautifully around her veil and the dress so plain and simple that he delighted in it. It was, he decided, perfect for her—because she was far prettier than any dress and so should be the star of the ensemble. He was quite proud to be beside her.

“Why do you keep looking at me?” Emily asked him, feeling awkward and out of place in this silly dress and the neat shoes that pinched. She had a prayer book under her arm and was frantically trying to remember which one she was assigned to read during the service, but her friend’s constant glances were distracting her. “Do I have something on my face? Is it my hair? Oh no, Spencer, is it my _teeth_ , tell me?!”

“No, no,” Spencer said hurriedly, cheeks flaming red. “You just look… really pretty today, Em. I keep thinking how pretty you are.”

“Oh.” It was Emily’s turn to blush, not entirely sure how to respond to that. After all, she knew how to respond to a compliment—Elizabeth had trained her over and over and so had their new etiquette teacher, who constantly astounded Emily with just how much he had to teach on what she assumed was a nothing subject—but not a _real_ compliment, from someone who mattered. So, she just said nothing, instead staring at her shoes and feeling both awkward still while also glowing a little with the knowledge that she was pretty. She wondered if others would notice how pretty she was, if Spencer had, or maybe he was just more used to looking at her…

“Emily, there you are,” Elizabeth called, bustling over to them. “Hurry up, there’s the photographer. Before we miss him.”

“Photographer?” Emily asked, hurrying after her mom with a glance back to make sure Spencer was following. “What for? Don’t you have enough pictures of me in dresses?”

“Don’t be pert.” Elizabeth stopped, studying her daughter up and down to make sure she was spotless. Emily resisted the urge to open her mouth so she could check her teeth too, like buying a horse in the old novels she read sometimes. “Family photos are a tradition. This is a memory.”

She didn’t say it like it was a memory, Emily thought grouchily. She said it more like it was something they had to do, and in that case, Emily wanted her say in the proceedings too—after all, if it was a _memory_ , well, she bet Elizabeth would rather her smiling than scowling.

“If they’re family photos, Spencer’s going to be in them too, right?” she asked, trying to link her arm with his and failing because he wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she grabbed his hand and yanked, hearing him squeak with surprise as he flew towards her and almost lost his glasses. “After all, he’s family, right?”

Elizabeth paused.

Emily squared her jaw, making sure to give her mother the most stubborn expression she knew just so there was no misunderstanding: she was going to fight about this.

“Of course,” Elizabeth said finally, conceding. “Spencer, come here. Let me fix your tie. Did you tie this yourself?”

“Yeeeees,” Spencer dragged out as he tried to regain his arm. “Didn’t I do a good job? I read how in a book, but there were no pictures so I kind of had to guess.”

“I can tell,” was all Elizabeth answered. “But perhaps next time, ask for a maid.”

 

There was a party after, which they were told was supposed to be for Emily but didn’t really feel like it was. Spencer, after a solid hour of being fussed at by adults he didn’t know and forced to eat a truly astounding amount of food, put his mind to finding a place to hide, wondering where Emily was—he hadn’t seen her for ages. But despite the flowers and decorations and the ‘Congratulations, Emily!’ on the cake he’d glimpsed, no one in this room was Emily’s friend or companion or family or even the same age—they were all adults, people Elizabeth knew, and he was feeling completely frazzled from ‘performing’ for them like he’d been instructed.

But there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to breathe, except…

“Oh, here you are,” he said with surprise as he waited until no one was looking and then dived under the cake table only to find Emily already under there. “Why are you hiding at your own party?”

“Why are _you_ hiding at my party?” she shot back, moving over to make room for him beside the plate of candy she had. Spencer shook his head when she offered him some; he loved candy, he really did, but _so_ many adults had already fed him _so_ much, poking his arms and exclaiming in Italian about how skinny he was if he refused. He’d never been likened to a chicken bone so many times in his life before.

“Because your mom told me to be ‘political’ if anyone asked me about taking First Communion,” Spencer answered glumly. “And it turns out I’m not very good at being political. I had to pretend to choke on a pastry to get away from one woman…”

Emily snorted. “Welcome to my life,” she said woefully. “You’d be surprised how often this happens, me sitting out something that’s supposed to be in my ‘honour’ because Mom sees it as a chance to socialise… at least here she’s not worried about networking me, so I _can_ hide… not like when I turned seven…”

“Oh well,” said Spencer, once again attempting to be ‘political’, which he thought might mostly mean avoiding conflict unless that conflict gained something in his favour. “At least it’s over now. Nothing could be worse than this, right?”

 

Nothing could be worse than this, Emily decided, trying to tiptoe across the room without wobbling while Spencer laughed at her. “See, look how dumb it is,” she told him furiously, tipping her head forward so the books fell into her arms. “Do you know what _he_ asked me today?”

“Something horrible, no doubt,” Spencer answered. ‘He’ was their much-hated etiquette teacher, who seemed to consider them both his greatest challenges. Spencer hated him particularly, since he was used to people telling _him_ that he was awkward and clumsy, but had never before now—before _this man_ —heard someone telling Emily that she was.

“He said I walk like a drunkard,” Emily declared, “and that I have shoulders like a man and a nose to be ashamed of.”

Spencer choked on his drink, speechless.

“And _then_ ,” Emily ranted, having not noticed her friend’s apoplectic rage, “he said that Mom should consider sending me to _finishing_ school instead of getting me ready for college because there’s no teaching me anything and at least then I can be a good wife! What a… what a _dick_.”

Spencer just trembled furiously and said nothing, sure that there was no one in the world more awful than the man they had to put up with for an hour once a week, telling them all the things they were doing wrong and just why they were horrible, uncultured beasts. In Italian, which only added to the dismay when he laughed at Spencer’s pronunciation. They’d discovered that Spencer, when flustered and only when speaking Italian, stuttered under stress. And during these lessons, he was _always_ under stress.

“I’m going to complain to your mom,” he announced, standing and fully intending to do just that.

But Emily shot towards him, books scattered in her haste. “Don’t,” she said. “He’s a dick, but if we send him away, imagine who we’ll get next—remember, Mom picked him. This is what she wants us to learn. At least he doesn’t hit. Some of the girls at school in London said their tutors would hit them if they were bad.”

Spencer scowled. “I don’t think that’s allowed here,” he said. “What’s gotten into you? You don’t normally let people be like this to you, but you never tell him to go jump.”

Emily shrugged, unsettled with no good understanding as to why, or with some understanding, as she thought once more about sin and being bad or good and whether that included letting him stand her against the wall and tell her all her flaws. “Maybe he’s not wrong, just horrible,” she said finally, looking away so she didn’t have to see if Spencer agreed. Suspecting it herself and having it confirmed were two different things. “My nose _is_ too long and my jaw is boyish. And I’m always getting bruises. If I want to be a bored socialite by twenty-five, I have to pick up my game. No one will marry me like this.”

This wasn’t right, Spencer decided right then. Emily was at a crossroads—and she didn’t need some stuffy old man telling her which path to take. “Or you can be a scientist with me and we can be ill-mannered together,” he informed her, picking up the books she’d dropped and sitting down, rethinking their approach. “You’re too smart to be bored for the rest of your life. And you have a nice nose. Probably my favourite nose out of all the noses that I've seen so far.”

“Thanks, Spencer.” She sat down next to him, watching him open the book out of reflex and beginning to read. A cursory glance at the cover informed her he was reading the book on puberty they’d dug up in their school library—and she smirked, having already read it cover to cover, been completely horrified, and knew he was going to be similarly mortified. “I don’t want to tell Mom how horrid he is. If it turns out she _knows_ …”

Spencer understood that: it would be a blow to realise that Elizabeth condoned the meanness, but he didn’t know how they could know that unless—oh. “I have an idea,” he said, right before turning the page and being completely distracted by the section on ‘nocturnal emissions in males’. “Oh no…”

Emily patted his shoulder companionably. “Don’t worry. At least now we know where the laundry is.”

Growing up, they were both discovering, _sucked_.


	16. Growing Pains

The horrible tutor was being especially horrible today. Spencer, who wasn’t feeling well at all, had had enough. “We’re not doing that,” he snapped as the man tried to get them to walk through yet another ‘greeting every dignitary from every country ever’ pantomime. “We did it last week. We know it. This is a waste of time.”

Emily stared at Spencer, surprised by his sour mood.

“You will do it, since I’ve been instructed to ensure that you are both presentable as human beings before—” the tutor began, but Spencer was already turning around and walking away to flop onto a couch, picking up a book and ignoring him. “Excuse me, Mr Reid, but what do you think you’re doing?”

“Not what you say,” Spencer replied. He felt hot and miserable and sore and hadn’t at all appreciated Emily’s response to him saying he felt ill, as she’d asked if maybe _he_ was going into oestrus.

“You’ll be able to have litters, Spence,” she’d said sweetly. He still wasn’t speaking to her.

Silence fell in the room as the man stared speechlessly at Spencer, Emily watching them both with the kind of curiosity one reserved for watching a bullfight or other blood-sport: mixed fascination and dread with a small side of shame that it was happening at all.

“Get up,” said the man.

“No,” said Spencer. He tried to curl up tighter against the book to make it more apparent that they were _not_ listening to this man anymore, but his belly responded with a twang of pain that made him hiss. It hurt so much that he desperately wished he could go to the bathroom and relieve it, but that wasn’t _working_. “And if you try to make me, I’m going to go to Elizabeth and tell her that you’re a liar and a cruel person, so there.” With that, he lifted the book and tried to read, ignoring his stomach.

More silence. Emily inched past the man until she could take the seat next to Spencer, smiling up at the man staring at them. “My mother thinks education is incredibly important,” she said with every amount of saccharinity in her voice she could muster. “We often discuss how wonderful it is that the world is so…” She paused, trying to remember the word that she and Spencer had rehearsed for this moment, to make the man terrified for his very job—an excellent way for them to shut him up without having Elizabeth replace him. “ _Progressive_ , nowadays. Mother thinks I might be a doctor, or a rocket scientist.”

“And she says that Emily is the prettiest person ever with the nicest nose,” Spencer added quickly, trying to smile and failing. He really just wanted to go to bed, dreading that he’d gotten some kind of horrible stomach bug. They were always awful, but possibly _worse_ when he didn’t have his mom to soothe him. Plus, embarrassing. They were _embarrassing._ He couldn’t possibly tell Emily or Elizabeth that he was having bathroom problems. The very idea made him want to crawl under his bed and hide forever. “And how angry she would be if someone was to lie and make Emily think that she’s ugly because of a facial feature that isn’t traditionally feminine—” He paused, Emily raising an eyebrow at him. Oops. That bit hadn’t been rehearsed.

“Ah,” said the man, confirming Spencer’s suspicions: he didn’t have Elizabeth’s blessing to be awful. That, and his gross feeling, gave him the courage to be brave with what he did next, or maybe Emily was just rubbing off on him.

“Therefore, we’re not doing anything you say because if you make us, we’ll tell her what you said. Instead, we’re going to my room to do homework. Come on, Emily. Let’s go learn something that _matters.”_ And off he went, keeping a vivid picture of how Emily had used to march about as a kid in his mind, trying to match her confidence.

“That was amazing,” Emily avowed as she ran after him, grinning widely with their win. “Are we actually going to do homework? I don’t even want to now, that was so _great._ Can we keep being rad like that? Do you think we’re ever going to have to do another manners lesson? What about if we—”

“I want to lie down,” Spencer confessed, stopping marching and wrapping his arms around his stomach as a wave of dizzy hit. “I really don’t feel well…”

Skidding in front of him, Emily looked him up and down seriously. “You don’t look sick,” she announced. “I read a book last week where the man was so sick he had spots. Maybe you ate something funny?”

“Everything I eat, you eat,” Spencer pointed out. “If it was something I ate, you’d be sick too.”

Right as he said that, Emily was sure that she felt a twinge in her stomach. “Uh oh,” she said, slapping her hands to her belly and widening her eyes for effect. “You jinxed it. We’d better both go lie down—dibs on the side of the bed that’s comfiest!”

“Which side is that?” Spencer yelled after her as she took off running up the hall. He definitely didn’t feel up to chasing her, limping after and feeling very sorry for himself.

“Whichever side you want more!” she called back, surprising absolutely no one with her logic.

 

Emily was having a nice evening. No stupid manners lessons, Spencer had been _awesome_ in telling the tutor how horrible he was, and dinner was their absolute favourite food ever followed by vanilla bean ice cream, which she _adored_ and so did Spencer but they only ever got sometimes. And she wasn’t just keeping up with her schoolwork, she was excelling, which meant her plan to go with Spencer to college was going just fine.

Being thirteen wasn’t all bad, she was finding, even if periods and politics had become a very unwelcome part of their lives now.

Sneaking a glance at Spencer two seats up from her found that he wasn’t eating his mushroom risotto, just moving it around on his plate as he stared dolefully down at it, his hair all lank and gross looking. She wrinkled her nose. Boys were oily, she’d noticed recently, or maybe just thirteen-year-old boys. But Spencer really wasn’t looking well anymore, like he’d gotten sicker since their nap, his face all white and kind of pinched and his eyes sunken. They always looked like that, Em knew, deep in his face and ringed with what looked like bruising, but today they looked especially bad.

“I’m excited about ice cream,” she said suddenly, startling the maid bringing a pitcher of drink out. Elizabeth wasn’t there, off somewhere doing something, and that was how Emily liked it. “When can we have ice cream?”

“At least attempt to eat your dinner, Emily,” the maid said with a slight smile.

Spencer looked up, lowering his fork. “Could I be excused please?” he said, looking very greasy now. “I had a big lunch at school and I’m really full and tired, I just want to sleep.”

The maid nodded. It wasn’t her place to tell them if they could or couldn’t leave the table, but Spencer was just polite like that. “Don’t you want ice cream, Spe—oh,” she said, trailing off as he vanished from the room. “Will you be remaining for dessert, Emily?”

“Absolutely,” declared Emily. Spencer’s sore stomach wasn’t going to stop _her_ from having ice cream—but she did ask for a bowl to take up for him, sure that he’d be sorry he’d left once he laid down for a little.

 

When she knocked on his door and let herself in, the room smelled of showering. A damp towel was on the floor in a puddle and she could see his wet hair sticking in clumps out of the blanket, both things that they got told off for and he was usually a lot more careful about. It was a little weird being in here now when it was this close to bedtime. Ever since they’d come to Rome, they’d mostly stuck to their own beds. It just didn’t feel like London, where they’d slept together because it was lonely not to—the rooms here were smaller, more private, and Emily guessed they both wanted a bit more space to themselves. After all, she didn’t want Spencer hanging around when she was grabbing a pad out of her drawer—that was a _private_ thing, and the book had said that boys had private things too that were their own embarrassments.

Despite knowing this logically, she still missed having him there at night, even if she didn’t really want him back taking up space and smelling like boy. But maybe for tonight, it would be okay, seeing as he did look really sick.

“Are you feeling any better?” she asked him, seeing him shake his head a little. “I brought you up some ice cream.”

“I don’t want it,” he mumbled, not even saying thank you. Suddenly, she was a lot more worried. “I’m full from lunch.”

Emily paused, inching over and leaning down, using the hand not holding the bowl of ice cream to tug open Spencer’s school backpack. Their lunchboxes were see-through since they weren’t allowed to have the cool, tin, superhero ones and there his was, still full. He hadn’t eaten a thing. Had he eaten at breakfast? She couldn’t remember.

“Is it a tummy bug?” she asked, putting the ice cream down on his dresser and walking over to the bed, leaning over him and trying to look at him like a doctor would. “What do you do for tummy bugs? Should I ask a maid?”

“No!” he snapped, scrunching his eyes shut. “I don’t _want_ to tell a stranger, I don’t want them in here touching me, I don’t _want_ them.” Sore and tired but too aching and hot to sleep, Spencer didn’t feel like being kind to his friend right now, his brain violently rejecting the idea of someone he didn’t know being here. He hated being touched, didn’t Emily understand that?! It was _different_ when it was her or his mom, but someone else… no. He’d rather be miserable in here, without his skin crawling at the idea. “I didn’t tell anyone when you started menstruating… don’t you dare snitch on me about this.”

Emily scowled. “I’m no snitch,” she snapped, looking around. “And menstruating is a gross word, don’t call it that. Where’s your books? Did you bring the medical encyclopedia?”

“No. It was too big for the plane.”

“Do you have any on stomach bugs?” Despite how cranky he was being, she wanted to _help._

“I don’t know. Maybe in the library? I haven’t had a chance to read everything in there yet…” He closed his eyes, another flush of heat hitting him. He decided to just breathe through it… in… out… in… “Do you think I can call my mom…?”

“I don’t think so,” Emily said after a beat of thinking. “Mom doesn’t like us calling overseas without asking, not since I rang Canada that time to ask whether you say moose or meese. I’m going to go see if there’s a book on bugs. Eat your ice cream while I’m gone, it will help—maybe you’ve got a sore stomach because you’re hungry.”

 

When she got back, Spencer wasn’t in the bed anymore. She found him curled up on the bathroom floor making sad noises to himself, the air vomity smelling. Wrinkling her nose against it, she walked in anyway and flushed the toilet for him since it looked like he’d gotten dizzy and laid down before doing so.

“I found this,” she said, holding up a basic home-care pamphlet that looked about ten years out of date and in Italian. Spencer blinked wretchedly at it, feeling his gut twist again and add to the spike of pain that felt like it was _moving._ “It says there’s no cure for stomach flu, by the way, but that you should have what I think is, um… peppermint tea. Anyway, it can’t hurt even if I got the word wrong, so I’m going to wait for another hour or so until the kitchen is closed and then go down and make you some. And get some bananas. It says eat bananas.”

“Are you sure it says to eat bananas?” Spencer asked. Eating sounded like the worst idea right now. “I don’t think I should eat…”

“I mean, if it’s a stomach bug, I bet it doesn’t matter what you eat really.” Emily tried not to laugh because he did look sad down there, fighting against her innate amusement at toilet things that still hadn’t quite run its course from childhood. “It’ll be out soon enough. By the way, gross. You’re gross right now.”

“If it’s a stomach bug, I’m contagious,” Spencer reminded her. Emily shrugged. At least she might get a day off school then, that was worth a bit of puking.

“I’m going to make tea.” She walked off, pausing by the door. “If you puke more, don’t miss—the maids will notice it and I’m _not_ cleaning it up.”

His only reply was a groan.

 

Elizabeth returned late to a silent home, the night security detail greeting her quietly as she entered and the two live-in maids long asleep. The children would be even longer asleep, and it didn’t occur to her to walk up to their rooms and check on them—it had been a very, very long time since she’d thought of checking on Emily in her room at night. If there was trouble, someone would have told her.

And there was still work to do despite the hour, so she spent some more time in her office filling out paperwork before finally making her way to bed. In the late hours of the night, almost morning, sometimes she wondered if there was a point to all of this. Of course, she quickly tamped those thoughts down—this was exactly what she wanted from life, and she was ensuring that Emily was having the most productive childhood she could have, Spencer too.

With that in mind, she laid down and closed her eyes, waiting for sleep to come. Sleep, much like everyone else in her life, was far too clever to disobey her.

But she woke suddenly with a thrill. Not entirely sure what had woken her, sitting up and reaching for the lamp. She was already laughing mentally at the startled thump to her heart, racing in her chest, as she fumbled for the light, sure that she’d woken for no reason—

The light came on, illuminating someone beside her bed.

“Christ!” Elizabeth yelped, almost striking her daughter from the shock of it. “Emily! You… what on earth are you doing in here?! Did you knock? Why are you _sneaking?”_

Emily just trembled a bit, pale and waifish looking in her long nightgown, hands over her mouth. She was biting her nails, Elizabeth noted with a frown. They would have to ask the doctor about that again, it was a detestable habit.

“Talk, now, or go back to bed,” Elizabeth snapped irately.

Emily lowered her hands. Lifted them again. Took a shuddering breath.

Elizabeth felt a twinge of worry.

Finally, her daughter spoke: “It’s not snitching if you have to tell, is it?” she asked, completely confounding Elizabeth.  “It’s only snitching if it’s a not important thing, surely? Because otherwise no one would tell anyone anything and everyone would be in trouble—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Emily, spit it out or go back to bed, it’s—” Elizabeth glanced at the clock beside her bed. “It’s barely five a.m.! You have school! This is ridiculous.”

“But I have to tell you something,” Emily blurted out, her eyes worried. “Two things, actually, because we didn’t tell you my thing so I have to tell you to make it okay that I’m telling you Spencer’s thing.” It was times like these that Elizabeth regretted having a daughter, as she realised she was going to have to walk her ludicrous child back to bed in order to stop her blabbering. But Emily was still speaking rapidly, derailing her thoughts: “Okay, so my thing is that I had my period—”

Elizabeth baulked. “Now?” she asked, glancing at the nightgown and, for a moment, having to remind herself of how old Emily was, and wasn’t that a weird thought—when had she gone and gotten so grown up? “Oh, Emily. I’ll help you clean—”

“Not _now,”_ Emily said, sounding frustrated. “Weeks ago now, well, a month, I think I’m supposed to have it again but it hasn’t come—that’s not what I’m telling you, Mom, listen!”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what cowed her more in that second: the fact that Emily was scolding her so furiously, or the fact that Emily hadn’t told her that such a momentous upheaval had come and gone in her life. How had she handled it? Who—

“I’m trying to tell you that Spencer’s _sick,”_ Emily finally got out, breathing hard with the relief of saying it, like she’d been fighting some internal battle—which, unbeknownst to Elizabeth, she absolutely had. “Really sick. And he told me not to tell anyone, but I think maybe he needs to go to the hospital.”

“What? Why?” Elizabeth slid out of bed, already reaching for her robe as Emily danced back out of the way, looking from the door to Elizabeth in such a way that Elizabeth began to hurry, suddenly feeling the urgency.

“He got out of bed and fell down and now he won’t get up,” Emily said with such calm that Elizabeth didn’t register for a moment what she was saying. “He says it hurt too much, and then he got all confused. And then I came and got you. It’s not stomach flu, is it?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer; she was already running.

 

Elizabeth found Spencer curled up on his bedroom floor, utterly refusing to move. Lights were coming on around the house as the alarm spread, Elizabeth having shouted for the maids as she’d run. A security guard was right behind her, pausing by the door with his hand on Emily’s shoulder as Elizabeth crouched by the child and touched the back of her hand to his forehead. It burned, Spencer opening his eyes and looking at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “I didn’t want to cause a fuss. Ow.” His ow was soft, but she suspected the pain was acute, hands pressed hard to his stomach. “It hurts so much if I move my hands.” Silent tears rolled down his face, the heat from him increasing.

Elizabeth knew what this was, she’d seen it before. “Emily, run down to the maids, find whichever of them is calling for the ambulance,” she said calmly, making sure to smile at Spencer so he didn’t panic. “Please tell them to alert the dispatch that I believe he has appendicitis.”

“Oh no,” Spencer whispered, the tears coming faster. Emily fled with a gasp.

“You’ll be okay,” Elizabeth told him firmly, gesturing for the security guard to come help her pick him up and carry him downstairs—the faster they got him to the hospital, the better the hope of that being true. “Appendicitis is easily fixed, although I do wish you’d told me sooner.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, crying harder in the man’s arms as he was carried out. Elizabeth sighed, putting aside a gnawing guilt that somehow she’d caused this, and setting herself to packing him a bag as the sound of a siren approached.

 

“What do you mean I’m not going with him?!” Emily shouted, trying to run beside the stretcher carrying her best friend from their home. He looked so small and confused up there, a mask on his face and already getting weird from the painkillers they’d shot in his arm. “I have to go with him! He can’t go _alone.”_

“You’re a child, and you’re not going,” Elizabeth told her firmly, catching her arm and dragging her back. The paramedics paused for a heartbeat, asking Elizabeth in Italian if she was to ride-along. “Emily, go back to bed. I’ll drive to the hospital in a car and make sure he’s okay, but I need my own transport in case I need to return.”

“Don’t _leave_ him!” Emily cried, utterly betrayed by the idea. “Mom, please! Spence!”

But the doors were already closing between her and her friend, leaving her standing in the wide-open doorway surrounding by milling strangers as the ambulanza pulled away, siren wailing. Her bare feet were cold on the sandstone floor, her hands in her mouth again as she bit at her nails, and Spencer was…

Alone.

“Go back to bed,” Elizabeth told her, reappearing with her coat and keys. “Now. You may stay home from school today, I’ll call to—”

“I hate you,” Emily said in a low, angry voice that nevertheless meant exactly what it was saying. “He’s alone and scared of _strangers_ and you _left_ him. I hate you!” And, with that, she turned and ran back upstairs. Elizabeth had no doubt slamming her bedroom door as she went.

“Signora Ambasciatrice, should I—” the maid began.

Elizabeth shook her head, cutting the woman off. “I will know as soon as he is in surgery as to how severe his condition is,” she said. “Until then, hysterics are unneeded. Emily needs to understand how to compartmentalise. Leave her until I return.”

“Very well, Signora. We hope he is okay.”

Elizabeth did too—she just knew there was no point being blatant about it. Composure, after all, was key.

 

Emily stormed around her room for a furious ten minutes before realising that that was doing nothing of use. She thought about it. Well, if she couldn’t be there with Spencer right now, she at least had to be sure that she was ready to go see him the _moment_ her mom came home to get her. She packed her bag quickly, pausing and thinking some more before running to Spencer’s room, sure that her mother would have forgotten to pack all kinds of important things.

And she _had_. Balthy was still tumbled in the bedding and all of Spencer’s books he was reading were sitting on the desk. Emily sighed at how silly her mother could be, packing clothes when things like this were much more important, before repacking a bag for him that was filled with the stuff he needed. Once that was done, and because it was still very cold, she went to get the blankets from her bed, which smelled cleaner than Spencer’s which smelled like being sick, and dragged them downstairs with her, making a comfy nest against the front door where she would be woken immediately upon someone opening it.

There she stayed.

 

Elizabeth opened the front door and jumped almost a foot when Emily tumbled onto her feet.

“Mom!” Emily cried, untangling herself from what looked like half of her bed and leaping up. She was dressed, Elizabeth noticed with surprise, a bag sitting beside her impromptu bed. “You’re back early! Is Spencer okay? Did his appendix explode? Are we going now? Is he home?”

“Slow down and get away from the door, ridiculous child,” Elizabeth told her firmly, shooing her back as she leaned down to drag blankets back inside the villa. “He’s fine. His appendix was perforated—”

“What does that mean?” Emily asked quickly, looking torn between worried and fascinated.

“It had burst—likely because neither of you told us he was ill. What on earth were you thinking, hiding that? You do understand how ill he would have become if he hadn’t gone to the hospital when he did—and how much suffering we could have avoided if you’d come to me in the first place?”

Emily visibly wilted, the guilt heavy on her skinny shoulders. “We didn’t think you’d…” she began, trailing off. Elizabeth sighed, and that sigh very nearly masked Emily’s last whispered word: “…care.”

Silence followed that, Elizabeth baulking. She didn’t know what to say.

“But anyway,” Emily quickly said, “we’re going now, right? I need to be there when he wakes up, to give him his stuff and reassure him that no one took his organs, or whatever. He gets weird sometimes, you know that—”

“We’re not going back now, don’t be silly. Visiting hours aren’t until later and he’ll be asleep—what on earth would be the purpose of going to sit in a hospital waiting for him to wake up?” Elizabeth was irate with the implication that she would have ignored Spencer’s illness, which probably contributed to her sharpness here, and her bluntness in cutting Emily off as she spluttered out a, “But I _have_ to be—” “Emily! Enough! I have enough to deal with with Spencer now, I don’t need you fussing as well! Go to your room and sleep—we’ll visit him during regular hours and I won’t hear you argue. You’re thirteen, not seven, it’s time to stop being a _child_.”

Stunned and deeply hurt, Emily didn’t run or storm away. She just swallowed it all down, took a step back to hide her tears, and said, “Okay,” before walking slowly out. But she didn’t go to her room, and not just because she’d left all the bedding by the door… she went to Spencer’s, sitting on his bed and looking around at all the empty space that was left behind.

She was scared for him. What if he died and she wasn’t there?

What if he thought she didn’t love him enough to visit?

Crying softly, she curled up on his bed and hoped her mom was right.

 

A call came at seven a.m. to inform the household, which hadn’t returned to sleep after the chaos of the night, that Spencer was out of surgery and doing just fine, sans his appendix. Elizabeth delivered the news to a tired-looking Emily, who was sitting at the dining room table picking the sultanas out of her breakfast oats. It was a mark of how much the girl had taken her words to heart, Elizabeth thought assuredly, that her only response to this was a small nod. No more fussing or wailing, just calm acceptance that Spencer was fine and there was never any reason to be so emotional. Elizabeth had been expecting endless questions of whether they could keep the appendix or just how they’d removed it, all sorts of gory and gruesome thoughts, and—as she sat down for her own breakfast—felt a small twinge of discontent that the table was silent.

“Would you like to stop by a store and buy Spencer a gift?” she said finally, breaking that now-awful quiet.

Emily shrugged.

“Perhaps a book to read, although he’d surely read it in seconds. Hmm. What else would Spencer like? I’ve seen these science toys in the stores, ones where you make your own robotics or volcanoes—does that sound like something he’d like?”

Emily drew a circle in her oats, watching the milk bubble up and pool in the line left by her spoon. She still hadn’t shaken this horrible feeling like something awful was happening while she wasn’t with her friend, her brain locked hard onto the image of him barely awake being wheeled away. All night, she’d thought about being taken away from her family barely conscious and waking up somewhere alone, opening her eyes in a strange room with no idea what was happening or who these people were… and Spencer’s Italian was _okay_ , but not amazing—what if he didn’t understand the doctors telling him that he was okay? The idea of that made her feel sick, like her stomach was tightening in anticipation of her being that lost.

“Maybe a friend for his hare toy?” Elizabeth asked, now feeling torn between angry at being ignored and desperate to make some kind of connection—entirely unaware at this point that more conversations like this, with her talking to a blank-faced, switched-off Emily, were dangerously close in her future, of which this was just the first. “Emily, look at me right now and—”

“Signora Ambasciatrice,” gasped a maid, hurrying in and startled them both. “There is a call for you, from Concordia, the ospedale—it is urgent, important, affrettati! The boy has taken a turn—”

Emily’s head rocketed up, horror striking home and bringing all of her worst fears to life. “Mom,” she whispered, feeling her entire body go cold with dread. But Elizabeth was already rushing out, without pausing to soothe her terrified daughter, who immediately and vividly imagined Spencer dead, his funeral, her life without him, packing up his belongings, her tragic return to school and how everyone would fuss but how _horrible_ that kind of attention would be without him there, his mom—

She launched out of her chair, abandoning her breakfast and grabbing the bag of Spencer’s belongings from the door at a run, sprinting outside and to the waiting car. The driver was there, having been told to stand by just in case, and he stared in shock as she leapt into the backseat and buckled in, refusing to be moved.

They were _going._

Elizabeth ran to the car, shouting for the driver to hurry—only pausing for a moment when she saw Emily already sitting in the back. But there wasn’t time to shoo her out, even though she didn’t want her there right now, not yet—instead, she just sighed and slid in beside her, a little startled when Emily didn’t move to make room.

“Concordia hospital, as fast as possible,” she instructed the driver, the most frightful band tightening around her chest. “Emily, what…” But she stopped, looking down and finding Emily slipping her hand into hers, clinging a little and peering up at her mom with a broken kind of need in her teary eyes. Speechless and dreading what was coming, Elizabeth hugged her arm around her and held her close, feeling both of their hearts hammering.

Emily didn’t ask what had happened and Elizabeth didn’t tell: neither of them really wanted to make it real by voicing it.

 

At the hospital, Emily was the quietest mouse of a girl imaginable, creeping behind her mom as Elizabeth strode through the halls. It was scary for Emily here, filled with people who didn’t look well at all and lined with sad faces. She didn’t want Spencer to be one of those sad faces or small bodies lying silently in the beds she peered in at. Surely, if she found him, he’d be awake and happy and just waiting for her… surely it wouldn’t be like her imagination. This would be a terrible time for her imaginings to finally come true.

“Wait over there, please, Emily,” Elizabeth instructed her, pointing to a waiting room. “I must go speak to the doctors.”

Emily nodded, intending to behave—but when she was sitting in the hard chairs waiting for her mom to return, she looked over to see two people hugging and crying. Not a happy kind of crying, they were crying like _their_ worst imaginings had come real… and Emily realised: this was exactly the kind of place where the worst things happened, regularly.

She needed to find Spencer.

Guessing that no one would help her find him since she was just a kid, she shouldered the bag and inched out into the hall, waiting for a break in the traffic to dart through the swinging doors behind which was where Elizabeth had gone. Down here, there weren’t as many sad faces—just doctors who looked incredibly busy and focused, like their jobs were taking up all of their attention. Avoiding those fierce faces, Emily ducked into the first room she saw, calling, “Spencer?”

An old man stared at her. Emily waved at him quickly before running to the next room, all the hairs on her arms standing on end when she found a girl asleep. No Spencer.

To the next room she went when no one was looking, calling his name gently and getting a surprised, “Who?” in French in reply.

The next room had no Spencer, neither did the next, and then the—

Emily skidded to a stop, ducking back into the room she’d almost torn past, looking again at the person in the bed. She’d walked right past him, assuming it _couldn’t_ be her friend because he didn’t look like that—with tubes in his nose and mouth and his body all swollen and strange. But that was his wild hair, wilder than usual, and she inched closer studying him intently.

“Spencer?” she whispered, wondering if he could hear her over the beeping of all the machines around him. There was a needle in his arm, another in his hand, and she reached out and went to touch his hand gently to see if he was real and not a doll just left lying there, but stopped when she saw the red rashes all over his skin. She swallowed, pulling her hand back and backing away for a second. She didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want—

But he needed her.

“I brought you Balthy,” she said, louder now, pulling the toy out of her bag and putting it between his motionless arm and his side. “And Blackavar, to keep an eye on you both. And I brought these too…” She’d pulled out both their old ragdolls, having grabbed them on a whim, but now she stared down at the Spencer-doll. “I think I’ll keep this one, just in case…”

In case of what, she wouldn’t say, but the doll was sat dutifully on a chair to wait for her while she finished unpacking the rest of the bag. When she was done, books stacked in place and his notebook sitting there, she climbed into the seat with the Spencer-doll, curled up small, and stared intently at him, making sure he didn’t go anywhere.

And that was where Elizabeth found her, her racing heart calming just a little when she found her wayward child. A doctor paused when he saw Emily in there, murmuring something about no visiting children in the PICU unrelated to the patients, but Elizabeth waved him away and walked in. Only now, seeing Emily sitting there staring so fiercely at her friend with the doll she was too old for clutched close, was it beginning to sink in—as Elizabeth walked up beside her daughter, seeing the toys tucked by Spencer’s arm and across his lap, she suddenly understood.

“He’s going to be okay,” she said carefully, moving the raven toy so it wasn’t resting on the supremely sensitive skin of Spencer’s swollen arm. “But be careful not to touch him for a bit, he’s going to be sore.”

“Appendixes don’t make you look like that,” Emily said, furious that she’d been lied to. “Why is he all puffy? He doesn’t look like he can _breathe_.” Tears welled up because even just looking at him hurt.

“He had a severe allergic reaction to the medication they used. It wasn’t in his medical history, so I assume this is the first time he’s reacted so violently. Emily, look—see those lines there?”

Emily looked to the needles in his arms, nodding despite her tears.

“They’re helping reduce the swelling so he can wake up,” Elizabeth explained.

Emily stared at them now, just as intently as she’d studied the rashes. “Are they making him sleep?” she asked doubtfully, because he didn’t really look asleep—he looked _dead_ , all pale and strange under the red splotches. And the tubes in his mouth and nose were breathing for him, so…

“No. That’s because he couldn’t breathe properly. Once his body has enough oxygen, it will let him wake. He’s not going to die, Emily—the doctors are helping him. Is that why you snuck in here, thinking he’d be gone?”

“Yes,” whispered Emily, only now letting herself begin to shake as it began to sink in that he was okay, that this was all just a big fright. And she was going to be so mad at him when he woke up and she told him how scared she’d been, for nothing! “Like Balthy… she just went to sleep and didn’t get up again. He _is_ going to wake up, right?”

“Absolutely,” promised Elizabeth. It was a mark of how far down she’d tamped down her own emotions that this came out as steadfast and sure as it did—Emily wasn’t the only one who’d had a terrible shock today.

And Elizabeth would never tell her how close it had come to being an entirely different kind of phone call, if the doctors hadn’t been so fast to recognise what was unequivocally a lethal anaphylactic response to the antibiotics. Her head still whirled from the doctor’s grim warning: if Spencer was given them again, he would die. He could have died today, while she was home, not _here._ Diana’s son would have died with no one there beside him, terrified and alone in a hospital where he didn’t speak the language well enough to understand _why_. And, possibly worse, when Elizabeth tried to hate herself for her hypocrisy, the furious part of her brain that loathed what she’d done in leaving Spencer here screaming at her that it would have been different if it _was_ Emily in that bed, if it had been Emily dying of a lethal drug reaction… possibly worse, she knew that that wasn’t true. Likely, she wouldn’t have been here for Emily either.

Emily didn’t know why her mom suddenly crouched and hugged her tight, nor did she know how to respond to the hug, not anymore. A younger Emily would have hugged back, sure in the love being shown—at thirteen, this Emily just sat stiffly and waited for it to end.

When Elizabeth let go, she pretended she hadn’t noticed, instead busying herself with making sure Spencer’s clothes were unpacked for what was going to be almost a week’s stay here. She had to call Diana, perhaps consider bringing her here… but no, Diana wouldn’t be able to fly to Rome, not in her condition. But someone must stay with Spencer—this had been slammed home to her.

“Mom,” Emily said suddenly, her shoes scuffing slightly on the floor and Spencer twitching towards the sound of her voice, his eyes moving under the lids. They watched him for a second until it became apparent he wasn’t waking up quite yet, but still Emily spoke quieter: “Do you love me?”

It was out of nowhere, and Elizabeth stared at her daughter, lost for words. What on earth was that about?

But Emily was on a mission.

“Of course, I do,” Elizabeth said finally, folding her arms in an attempt to seen furious instead of astounded. “What kind of a question is that?”

Emily ignored her, barrelling on: “Okay, so you’d be heartbroken if I died, right?”

Elizabeth didn’t dignify that with an answer.

“Well,” said Emily, feeling a muscle in her jaw pinch from trying to hold everything confusing that she was feeling in, “I don’t think I’d ever be happy again if you died. And I’ve been imagining lots of different people where Spencer is now, alone and maybe he could have died, like that… and it hurts…”

“Emily…”

“I think you should imagine what it would be like if it was me and you weren’t there and I died and suddenly you couldn’t stop imagining it, just like I can’t— ” Emily stopped to breathe, her face as red as Spencer’s arms but without the blotchiness, ready to continue her rant—but Elizabeth stopped her with two simple words that she hadn’t even decided on until then, recognising what her daughter was trying to do.

“I’ll stay.”

And Emily just nodded, curled around her Spencer-doll, and whispered, “Thank you.”

 

There was a moment later that day that Elizabeth never forgot. It was after many other unforgettable moments, but they were unforgettable for all the terrible kinds of reasons—calling Diana and realising that she was having a bad day and being forced to try to explain what had happened being only one of those moments. Another had been a minor malfunction in the machine helping Spencer breathe, which hadn’t hurt him at all but had certainly shaved years off of her and Emily’s lives when it had wailed an alarm incorrectly informing them that he _wasn’t_ breathing. A loose wire, they were told after, but the panic took a long time to fade. Emily would have nightmares of that moment for a long time following.

And then there was this. Emily was asleep on the bed they’d brought in for Elizabeth to sleep in, curled tight around her Spencer-doll and still in the position she’d been lying in before she’d slept, carefully watching Spencer’s face. Elizabeth was seated beside his bed, hands in her lap and—for the first time in a long time—with absolutely nothing to do to pass the time. Devoting herself to this moment, as she’d vowed to do upon realising how much she’d let slide, was harder than she’d imagined, and maybe she wouldn’t have managed it if it wasn’t for Spencer opening his eyes.

“Don’t talk,” she said quickly, seeing him shift the muscles in his throat around the tube. “That will be out very soon, I promise.” She was proven right, the nurses quickly removing it now that he was awake to fight against it, leaving the ones in his nose in. Elizabeth helped him drink, seeing him look from her to Emily with his expression confused. “Do you remember what happened?”

“No,” he rasped, throat sounding sore. But before she could tell him, he reached out and took her hand, already looking like he was about to slip back to sleep. “Don’t leave.”

And then he was asleep, still holding her hand like knowing she was there was the only reason he felt safe—like he trusted her completely. She remembered teaching him to skate.

Very suddenly, looking at him and then over to her daughter, she realised how much she had to lose. And she held onto his hand tight, making sure he was asleep and no one was watching before leaning over to kiss his warm cheek, feeling strange about just how much it mattered to her that she do this, despite him not being her child. Despite it being impossible that she cared for him like she did Emily. She didn’t have the capacity to love more than one child, of that she was certain.

Except, maybe she did.

“Only if you promise not to leave either,” she said more for her own sake than his. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again. I’m… I don’t know what I’d do if… well, just don’t.”

And he slept on, completely unaware that, from now on, Elizabeth would regard him very differently.


	17. New Friends, Old Mistakes

Something surprising happened in the two weeks Spencer ended up spending in hospital. It wasn’t the longest they’d been without each other, with Emily sometimes accompanying her mom on long trips away during holiday months and Spencer spending weeks in the US with his own mom at least twice a year—but it felt different. For one, Emily had to go to school without him and return home similarly devoid of her friend. It was a horrible reminder of how lonely she’d used to be, and she wasn’t a fan at all, soon preferring to join her mom at the embassy rather than return home immediately after school—despite the fact that, ever since the night Spencer had almost died, Emily was nurturing a deep-seated anger at her mother, it at least gave the option of visiting Spencer when Elizabeth did. And it was there, sitting alone in a hardly-used conference room drawing Spencer a get-well-immediately card that the surprising thing happened: Emily made a new friend.

Her name was Fiona Duncan, and her dad worked with Emily’s mom. The first moment she’d walked in, Emily had been captivated by her—she was confident and fierce but in a different way to Emily. Not like the forced kind of fierceness Emily sometimes felt that she was putting on, but it a way that Emily could tell was just how she _was._ She was cool and collected and fun and, as soon as Emily showed her the card and explained that her best friend ever had almost died, she even turned out to be great at drawing too.

“What does your friend like more than anything?” Fiona asked, pulling a piece of paper towards herself. Emily looked down at her hand, noting her perfectly painted nails and feeling a tinge of longing—they looked so cool, all red and black, and her clothes were just as cool as the rest of her. This was a girl who was allowed to be _herself—_ not who her mother wanted her to be _._

“Hares,” Emily said absently, running over the things Spencer liked. “Books. Learning things. Chess. Magic. Hmm… me.”

Fiona was looking at her and smiling. “You, huh?” she asked, beginning to draw busily. “That’s super cute. Are you guys in love?”

Emily spluttered. “What? No! Gross! He’s _Spencer_. He’s not the kind of boy girls get crushes on, especially not _me.”_

“Why not?” Fiona asked, moving her hand as she sketched to reveal what she was working on. Emily watched in awe as a sketch of her appeared, but she was on a chariot pulled by giant hares with what looked like hair made of _fire_ and a dress made of knives. It was possibly the coolest thing ever, made slightly less cool by the addition of the caption: “Wishing you were hare!” “From what you’ve told me, he sure sounds like the kind of boy girls get crushes on. He’s almost _fourteen_ , that’s so mature.”

“I’m almost fourteen too,” Emily said. “It’s not so special.”

“Yeah, but you have to admit—it’s super romantic that he almost died in your arms, right?” Fiona was adding knives to the hares now, and a dragon to the sky, and Emily was pretty sure they were destined to be friends.

“I mean, I guess,” she said, uncertain now—and not mentioning that fact that he hadn’t really almost died in her arms, since it was at the hospital he’d had the allergic reaction and when he’d been at home he was mostly crying on the bathroom floor because his stomach had hurt. “I don’t think we’re in love anyway. I’d _know_.”

“How do you know?” Fiona seemed genuinely interested in the answer, suddenly looking up and noticing Emily still looking at her nails. “Ooo, do you like them? I can show you how to make the patterns, if you like. I’ll just have to sneak my polishes here in my bag, they don’t like us bringing them to school.”

“Yes, _please,”_ Emily said with relish. One thing about growing up with just a boy as a friend was that she sometimes looked at the girls and the stuff they talked about and wondered if they were things she’d like, if only she had the chance to play with them. How would she know if she liked nail polish and make-up and dresses that _she_ got to pick—not her mom—unless she had the chance to try them? “And I just know. The books make being in love sound all big and surprising, like your whole world is different.”

“Well, yeah, but like… it is, isn’t it? If he’d died, you’d be so sad and everything would be different—isn’t that love?”

Emily didn’t know enough about love to debate that, deciding to ask Spencer later. “How do you test if you’re in love?” she asked finally, thinking of the magazines she’d flipped through sometimes at the store and the quizzes they had in there that Spencer laughed at and she wondered about, sometimes. “You know, if you’re not sure.”

Pushing the finished drawing back over, full of so much fire and fierceness that Emily just _knew_ Spencer was going to love it, Fiona seemed to think about it. While she did, Emily considered that she’d never really had a conversation like this before—it wasn’t really the kind of conversations she had with Spencer… but she kind of thought she might be having fun anyway?

“I think the only way you’ll ever know is if you kiss him,” Fiona announced.

Emily laughed that off, but the idea lingered and a plan was made.

 

Permission was granted for Fiona to visit Spencer with Emily after he was moved out of intensive care and into a ward, Elizabeth sounding surprised when Emily assured her that, “Spencer and Fiona are good friends, I promise.”

“I wasn’t aware Spencer had other friends,” she replied.

Emily shot back with an anger that surprised all three of them, “Well, you can add that to the list of things you don’t know about him.” There was a brief moment where she froze, waiting to be scolded, but the blow had struck too neatly home for Elizabeth to acknowledge it. The rest of the car ride was in silence, with Elizabeth busying herself with her paperwork and the girls pretending they weren’t embarrassed by seeing Emily snap at her mom like that.

Once at the hospital, Emily bolted ahead—ignoring her mother’s exasperation—leaping into Spencer’s room and interrupting him dissecting a sandwich with two plastic knives, clearly bored. “Pretend you know her, her name is Fiona Duncan and she’s the _coolest_ ,” Emily rambled, Spencer blinking in confusion at her before the door opened again and two people came in.

One, to his horror, was a _girl_. Even worse, a pretty girl he didn’t know, and he quickly yanked the blankets up over his hospital gown, cheeks burning as he remembered his unbrushed hair and crooked glasses. What was Emily doing!?

“Hi, Spencer,” Fiona said breezily, gliding over to him and doing the most unexpectedly upsetting thing by leaning in and hugging him. Not a fast hug either—it was a proper hug, the sort of hug you only gave people you really liked, and she kissed his cheek before letting go. Poleaxed, he stared at her, his brain tripping over how soft her lips had been on his skin and the scent of her shampoo. “How are you feeling?”

“Me? I’m feeling. I mean, I’m me, feeling… me.” He swallowed, trying again when Emily hid her face, Elizabeth looking startled. “I’m… Fiona, I mean, fine. Hi.”

She smiled at him and it made his head spin a bit, trying to smile back and feeling it sit strangely on his face, kind of silly and confused. “Emily and I made you something. Here you go!” And she handed him a drawing that was definitely all Emily’s influence, with Emily atop her chariot of hares.

Spencer loved it immediately, flushing red and trying to stammer out a thank you. He still didn’t know who this girl was or why she was here—or why Emily was looking at her like that, like she was the best thing she’d ever seen. Were they friends? She’d never mentioned a Fiona.

“Madam Ambassador,” Fiona said suddenly with supreme politeness, turning and beaming a sweet smile at the lady. “Could you please show me where I could buy Spencer a gift? A proper gift, one just from me—a puzzle book maybe?”

“Oh, you don’t have—” Spencer stammered, but Elizabeth had already agreed, leading the way out of the room and leaving Emily and Spencer alone.

Emily wasted no time.

“Fiona says I should kiss you,” she said, bouncing up onto the bed and pushing his knees over. “Am I allowed to look at your scar yet?”

“It’s not a scar, it’s still a wound. It only just happened. Why does Fiona want you to kiss me?” Spencer pushed his glasses more firmly onto his nose, jarred loose by the hug, and then inched over to carefully place his drawing right where he could look at it on his bedside cupboard. “Why is everyone suddenly _kissing_ me?” This was a very distressing prospect for him, the idea that this might continue—what was so different about him post losing his appendix that people kept being so unexpectedly _touchy?_

“To see if we’re in love,” Emily answered matter-of-factly.

Spencer stared at her. “You’ve been reading those horrible novels again,” he announced.

“I have not!”

“You _have_. You always get romance brain when you read them. You don’t see me running around trying to kiss people when I read about physics.”

Emily snorted. “No, you just throw things off of roofs—”

“It was a staircase—”

“—and, besides, we’re teenagers now. Falling in love suddenly is what teenagers do. So I think you should kiss me so we can know if we’re in love or not.”

Spencer’s scowl in return was so ferocious that Emily wasn’t entirely sure whether he was going to kiss her or bite her. “I don’t want to,” he complained. “Surely if we were in love, I would _want_ to kiss you. Besides, I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“Ew,” Emily said.

“Ew,” he agreed. “Look, how about we agree that neither of us really wants to kiss the other right now and if that, for some reason, changes in the future, we’ll let each other know, okay?”

“Okay!” Emily agreed, thinking that that was a perfectly sound plan.

And that was that: the test of whether they were in love was delayed to a later date, despite Fiona’s disappointment. Something that wasn’t delayed however was Emily and Fiona’s friendship—to Spencer’s surprise, that remained.

For better or worse.

 

As it turned out, Fiona attended the same school that Emily and Spencer did, and was very impressed when it turned out that the reason they weren’t in the same class was because Emily and Spencer were in higher grades.

“You guys must be super smart,” she told Emily at lunch as they walked through the yard together, Emily wistfully wondering when Spencer would be allowed to return.

“Spencer’s a genius,” Emily answered. “I’m just stubborn and don’t like him beating me.”

Fiona was very amused by that. “You’re great,” she informed Emily, who was more than a little startled to be told so by someone who wasn’t Spencer. “Come meet my friends.”

Emily, a little wary, agreed. Fiona’s friends turned out to be just as exuberant as Fiona herself, welcoming Emily immediately. She’d never been immediately liked before: it was an intoxicating feeling, one she suspected she’d do anything to maintain. Matthew Benton wasn’t quite as shy as Spencer, but he had a smile that was just as sweet, and Emily liked his big hands and quiet jokes that never made her feel singled out. John Cooley was different—where Matthew was sweet, he was rough, sneaking a cigarette behind the girl’s toilets with the others sitting there talking like it wasn’t anything exciting. Emily watched him smoke, surprised by how confident he was that they wouldn’t be caught despite her hammering heart, and noting a small scar on his lip and a smile that made her feel wild too.

“Want one?” he asked her, shaking one out of the packet with an easy flick of his wrist.

No, she didn’t—but she suddenly felt very young next to these people, as Matthew and Fiona talked about sneaking out on the weekend to drink and John stood there with a smoke in his mouth. She didn’t want them to think she was a kid.

“Yes, please,” she said, taking the cigarette and pausing. What was she supposed to do now?

But John laughed, his laugh wild too, magicking a lighter from his sleeve. “Come here,” he told her with a wink. “I’ll show you how, otherwise you’ll cough your lungs up.”

 

At the hospital that night, Spencer finished an excited discussion about the nurse he’d met to pause and sniff the air, Emily sitting beside him in the bed.

“Do you smell smoke?” he asked, looking around.

“Nope,” Emily said with forced calm, resisting the desire to smell her sleeve. “You’ve been cooped up in here too long, your brain has gone weird.”

And she didn’t tell him about Matthew, or John. Not yet.

 

Spencer was returned home to be fussed over by everyone in the house, even the security staff ruffling his hair and telling him how much better he looked—which he thought was an obvious thing, if they were comparing his appearance now to when his appendix was busy exploding. Elizabeth was the most surprising; he came home to find a brand-new VCR player and television set to match in his room, since the risk of infection in the surgical wound hadn’t quite abated enough for the doctors to recommend his return to school. When he asked Elizabeth about it, shocked by the generosity of the gift, she informed him that it was partially from his mother who couldn’t fly there to be with him and wanted him to have something to occupy his time while he was recovering.

He very much doubted that story though. His mom had never been one for TV.

However, following that statement, Elizabeth had asked him if he would like to watch a movie together if he didn’t mind. To this date, he had never seen her sitting down and relaxing over a movie—especially not with _him._ Startled and a little confused, with Emily still at school, he agreed.

And they did. He picked a horror movie that Elizabeth was scandalised by but watched attentively anyway, asking him questions that he answered with relish. It was… fun? But he didn’t really know what to make of it. He decided to ask Emily when she returned from school, keeping one eye on the clock as the movie finished and Elizabeth had to leave to return to work in her office. Two o’clock came and went. As did three o’clock.

And four, then five… then six, and he was served dinner that Elizabeth came up to eat with him, telling him that Emily was at a friend’s for dinner before she began explaining to him the work she was doing currently, something complicated to do with trade agreements and sanctions that he soon found himself enthralled in. When dinner was over, Elizabeth looked startled that so much time had passed, clearing the plates and getting the dressing to help him change his bandages. He couldn’t quite do it himself yet, mostly because seeing the wound freaked him out and the few times he’d tried, he’d done it with his eyes shut. He’d expected a maid, however, not _Elizabeth._

“Don’t flinch,” she told him gently, one hand holding him still as the other eased the bandage away. He squeaked to see the gross on the bandage, alarmed by the concept of his abdomen _leaking._ “The discharge is good, Spencer. It’s clear. The doctors explained this, it’s not bad unless it’s pus. Close your eyes if it upsets you that much. You’re never going to be a doctor, are you?”

“Not unless I don’t have to _look_ ,” he said firmly. “Although maybe it’s not so bad if it’s someone else…”

Elizabeth laughed at that, a rare sound. He watched her, surprised once more and suddenly thinking that maybe she wasn’t as unapproachable as he’d always thought… wouldn’t Emily be surprised by that?

But he didn’t have time to ponder this new thought, because something that apparently came with almost dying was being very, very tired quite suddenly. He flopped back into bed, wanting a shower but not wanting the fuss that came with keeping his dressings dry, feeling his eyes slip shut despite it being only seven p.m. and he hadn’t seen Emily yet today…

A hand smoothed his hair, slipping away to take his glasses. “Goodnight, Spencer,” Elizabeth said softly, stopping to turn on the snow-themed globe he still had from Chambers, all those years ago before she turned off the overhead light. “Don’t fuss in the night or you’ll pull a stitch.”

“Night,” he mumbled in reply, or maybe he just fell asleep without saying anything at all.

 

They were supposed to study the next day, despite Spencer still being on bedrest for another two days. But there were assignments coming up, and Emily had started hers and then promptly forgot in all the fuss of Spencer being sick and her suddenly being _wanted_ places after that. After school, Fiona kept asking her to hang out—in just a week, Emily had done all kinds of things she’d never done before: she'd gone shopping in a group and tried on clothes with Fiona in the change room with her telling her what looked best, she’d eaten lunch at a pizzeria with her friends around her teasing and joking and being loud and _alive_ in a way that Spencer just wasn’t, and they’d gone out driving with Fiona’s older brother, Emily winding down the window and gasping at the speed they were going as Fiona took control of the music—to her brother’s disgruntlement.

On this day, as she raced into the villa and upstairs without even stopping to put her backpack away or change her uniform, she skidded into Spencer’s room and waved her hands at him. “Look,” she said proudly. “Aren’t they _wild?”_

They were her nails, painted in vivid blacks and purples. Spencer stared at them, startled by the splashes of colour.

“They are cool,” he said, right before Emily tugged her school skirt—regulation length right down to her shoes—up and winked as she showed him what she was wearing underneath. “What on earth are _those?”_

“Fishnets,” she informed him, dropping her skirt after a nervous glance over at the door. “They’ve got patterns in them like wire, how wild is that? Fiona says they’re very goth.”

“Goth?”

But Emily didn’t answer him, just bounced away to her bag to drag it up to the bed to show him what else she’d bought. “Don’t tell Mom,” she whispered, opening it to reveal shiny black canisters of something he couldn’t quite recognise and colourful pallets in greys and blacks and greens. “Fiona’s going to show me how to use it. I can be _me.”_

“Make-up?” he asked, not entirely convinced. “Won’t you get in trouble? Your mom is always complaining about girls in school being too young for make-up.”

“John says Mom is a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with the establishment,” Emily announced with a kind of savage anger. “He says we have to be better than her, and part of being better than our parents is by being what they’re _not._ For one, being honest—I don’t think she’s ever been honest in her life. Well, I’m going to be. I’m going to be me and that means not being _her_ anymore. We’re not just here to confirm you know?”

Spencer stared, absolutely stunned and confused as to where this was coming from. “Uh,” he said, but Emily didn’t seem to need his input on something she was so set on.

“You’ll see,” she said with firm surety, standing and zipping her bag closed once more. “The gang said you can sit with us at lunch, they’re really excited to meet you—and you’ll understand once they explain it! It’s self-expression, something which we don’t get enough of in this place. Oh! I said I’d call Fi!” And she darted out of the room.

“But we were going to stu—oh,” Spencer called after her, realising she was gone. Another thread of worry inched into his gut. This was what he’d been scared of about turning thirteen—everything being different. They were going to _change_ , all the books had warned them about that… but he hadn’t yet. He was still same old Spencer, always the same old Spencer, with no desire to be joining any wild societal movements any time soon, thanks.

And how long before same old Spencer was too boring for Emily to like anymore?

 

Spencer didn’t seem to like her friends.

His first day back at school was the most exciting day _ever_ , or at least in recent memory, right up until lunch and Emily hurrying him over to the toilet block. He looked uncertain as they ducked behind the building, and Emily watched that uncertainty grow as he looked at John and noticed the smoke in his mouth.

“Spencer, this is John Cooley,” Emily said, determined to forge ahead. She loved her friends, so surely Spencer would too—he just needed to adjust and not… not be weird. She really hoped he wouldn’t be weird, a sudden anxiety spike making her voice turn a bit sharp as she began worrying about him embarrassing her in front of these people who hadn’t quite fully accepted her yet, she didn’t think. “And that’s Matthew Benton, and you know Fiona.”

Fiona waved happily, Matthew smiled shyly, and John stepped forward with a confidence Emily was in awe of to hold his hand out to Spencer, a trail of smoke drifting from his cigarette.

“Awesome to meet you, my man,” John declared, hand hovering between them. Spencer looked at the dirt under his nails and edged back, his own palms suddenly sweaty as he fought the twin desires of wanting to put on a good face for Emily’s new friends and not wanting to touch that hand. He’d been doing a _lot_ of reading on germs while in the hospital… But John didn’t seem bothered. “You don’t shake? Righteous. That’s what I’m talking about—these outdated…” He seemed to lose his words for a minute, looking for the right one while Spencer watched him silently and Emily gazed adoringly. “You know. Traditions, err… parodies. Farces, that’s it!”

“Hallmarks of the establishment,” Emily suggested. Spencer looked at her now, a bite of something cranky building in his brain. John laughed, nodding and holding out his packet of cigarettes. Spencer shook his head but, to his utter shock, Emily took one and leaned close to let John light it. And that was… alarming.

“Can we talk?” he asked, not waiting for an answer before walking around the corner, nose wrinkling at how gross it was back here. Emily followed. “I don’t even know what this guy is _saying.”_

“Well, you just have to listen—”

“No, Em—I _understand_ the concepts, probably better than you do.” That was a mean jibe, and he regretted it instantly as she looked hurt. But he didn’t stop because he didn’t trust guys like John Cooley—and Emily shouldn’t either. “Definitely better than they do. How old is that guy? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, _none_ of them do. They’re just… just… bastardising counter-culture in order to seem cool in front of you. Well, John is. I don’t know about the other two.”

Emily gave him a strange look, one he didn’t really recognise on her. Later, he’d understand it as her new kind of anger, the type she’d learned the night she’d seen her mother abandon him to strangers: the type that was hidden and dangerous and unpredictable because it built up and lashed out at any target that was close. “You don’t like them,” she said, which was true. “Why not?”

“I don’t _trust_ them,” he said, which was also true. “Smoking? Since when have you smoked? Do you know that some studies suggest that every smoke is seven minutes less of quality life—”

“You think you’re smarter than them,” Emily said quietly, the dangerous anger still simmering. This wasn’t one of her old tantrums—they were a thing of the past now, and maybe that wasn’t entirely for the best because at least those were visible and burned out fast. “That’s what this is. You don’t like them because you think you’re smarter than them. So, they don’t know what punk is about. So _what._ I don’t either—I’m almost fourteen and it’s _cool_ , okay? I don’t need to have a… a, I don’t know, scientific theory on it or understand it to think it’s cool and to want to be a part of that, do you get that? Not everything needs to be dissected—we’re not books that know all the answers, Spencer, we’re people and you need to get that, whether you like it or not.”

“You shouldn’t _trust_ him—”

“Why not? Because you’re jealous? Because you’re scared I like them more? Well, I don’t—you’re my best friend, and I thought you’d realise that that’s not going to change just because I made some other friends. You’re my best friend, but I don’t always want to hang out with _you._ When I’m with you I’m exactly how I’ve always been—and I don’t want to be that person anymore before I wake up one day and realise I’ve turned into _her.”_ Emily said this with a vehemence that shocked Spencer, as he registered who ‘her’ was.

“Your mom isn’t so bad,” he said, which was a mistake. “When I was sick—”

“She left you to die,” Emily snapped furiously. “You’re too nice to see it, but she’s a cold-hearted _bitch_ and she walks away as soon as we’re not who she wants us to be. You watch—right now you’re important to her because you haven’t disappointed her yet, but the first time you do it will be just like that night… she won’t be there and you’ll be alone. Well, not anymore. I’m not playing her games anymore. I don’t _need_ her anymore, I don’t _need_ anyone, and John can teach me how. You can come or go, I don’t care.”

She turned and paused by the corner, waiting to see whether he’d walk away or not. There was a vivid burn of unhappiness fighting to be shown, but she refused to show it. No more. No more explosions of feeling for her mother to see and mock—Elizabeth wanted her to be _less?_ Well, Emily could do that… even if it hurt to hold it in, and even if it hurt more than anything to fight with her friend.

“I’ll come,” Spencer said quietly, following her back to her friends.

But he didn’t look happy about it.

 

Life did change for them after that. For Emily, it was for the better—she’d never felt more comfortable in her own skin, easily shaking off Spencer’s critiques that she was only doing a lot of the stuff she was doing to ‘fit in’, citing the hypocrisy of her conforming to the group’s expectations of her. But she knew—some of the stuff she was doing, like the smoking and the careful swearing she’d begun to pick up was so she’d seem older and savvier for them, sure, but there were parts that were _her._ The wild clothes she wore when Elizabeth wasn’t there to scold, the crazy hair she began to experiment with—Fiona helping her and both of them cackling to see how wild they could get it—and the sneaking out and being _free._ This was her! It wasn’t pretending, it wasn’t false, and it was something _real._ Spencer just didn’t get it, because he’d always been him and had never been scared of being trapped as someone else—but she’d lived her entire life under someone else’s expectations, and now she could finally see a light at the end of it all. An ‘Emily’ hidden somewhere under all the Elizabeth.

For Spencer, it was for the worse. He didn’t want to lose Emily, despite her reaffirming over and over that they were still best friends, just in different ways to how she was friends with the others; so he tried to do what she was doing and ‘fit in’, only to find he didn’t have her natural talent at it. He definitely wasn’t going to smoke or sneak out to go throw rocks at things or draw on stuff with a permanent marker, and he wasn’t interested in finding his identity through clothes or silly hair. He was him, and he’d always be him—wasn’t that enough? And even when he gritted his teeth and tried to be himself around them, it grated. All his wrong edges were catching up on them, jokes he tried to make earning forced laughs or confused stares, contributions to the chatter petering out, his ability to engage with people so radically different from him non-existent. And every time it happened, he imagined Emily inching just that little bit further away from the embarrassment he was around normal people their age.

So he fell back on facts and statistics, where he was comfortable, which seemed to annoy them. It was a little funny the first time one of them said, “How about dumbing that down for us normals?” he guessed, since Emily laughed, although it was never really funny to him. By the time they just started talking over him, he'd realised the best way he could be himself around them was to… not. He sat quietly and didn’t say anything from then on, even when Emily tried to pull him into the conversation. The lesson had been learned: he was weird and there was no fixing that. Despite Fiona seeming determined that he remain a part of their group, he drifted away, validated in this choice when no one—not even Emily—came looking for him. The library was fine anyway. He could study, which was more than what Emily was doing with her time.

But someone did come looking.

“Here you are,” said the voice that wasn’t the one he’d expected, looking up to find Fiona walking up to him. “I like it in here too. It’s peaceful, especially when that lot get rowdy. But you’re not here for some peace, are you?”

He didn’t know what to say. Hadn’t she worked out he was incapable of human communication by now?

But Fiona refused to be put off by his steadfast silence, hating his sad little corner in here, away from his best friend and looking lonely as hell. That hadn’t been her intention when she’d told Emily to come hang out with them. “I’m sorry John is how he is,” she said, sitting next to Spencer and touching his knee with her hand, missing how wide his eyes went at the contact. “He thinks he’s got everything figured out and doesn’t like people who threaten that. People like you.”

Spencer wasn’t sure why she was looking at him like that, all eyelashes and mouth. He felt very much in danger, despite knowing she was trying to be kind. Sort of. Maybe?

“I don’t threaten anyone,” he said. “I just want to be left alone.”

It was a hint, not a subtle one, but she didn’t take it. “I know you probably don’t want to come back and sit with us,” Fiona told him seriously, with every good intention. “But, um, I mean, you shouldn’t sit by yourself. If you want, I can come sit with you sometimes—I like your weird facts and stories, they’re super sweet. I can’t _every_ lunch, but you know… sometimes. If you want? We can share lunch?”

He looked at her. “I appreciate the kindness,” he said eventually, choosing his words carefully. “But I don’t want to sit with anyone that isn’t Emily, sorry.”

Fiona looked startled. “Even though she’d rather have John flirting at her?” she asked.

“Even then,” he said loyally, picking his book back up. “Ours is a different kind of friendship.”

“It sure is,” Fiona replied, Spencer completely missing how envious she was of him right then. “Well, if you change your mind, I’m going to tell John to stop being such an asshole to you—you can come back anytime. Emily would be super happy if you did, she gets all quiet and mopey when you’re not there.”

Spencer didn’t believe that, but Fiona thus far hadn’t appeared to be a liar.

“For what it’s worth,” Fiona called back as she walked away, pausing by the end of the aisle looking as nervous as he’d ever seen her, her cheeks bright red. “I think Emily was wrong when she said you’re not the kind of boy girls get crushes on. I wouldn’t mind kissing you.” And then she was gone, leaving him sitting there stunned.

When he went home that night, he didn’t tell Emily. He wasn’t sure it was something he should share. But he held those words close; after all, if _Fiona_ wanted to kiss him, whether he wanted to kiss her back or not… well, maybe he wasn’t as weird and unappealing as he’d thought he was.


	18. An Interesting Age To Be

The Christmas of 1984 found them in Seattle. Spencer was inside in the warmth of the Big House, regaling his mother with stories of Rome and the people they'd met there, talking with an exuberance that Elizabeth realised she missed listening to.

Emily, who was quietly sad for no good reason, wasn't in the warmth of the living room with the others or sitting by the Christmas tree. It was all well and good being angry at everything, she'd found, but there were times when that anger sat strangely on her shoulders. In Rome with her friends alongside her, the past eight months had been easy to be angry in. Rebellion, she'd found, was simple when you had people to rebel with. But here, in Seattle and surrounded by reminders of who she'd used to be without any of the unhappiness still lingering, it was… difficult. Spencer wasn't a rebel and he wasn't interested in the big ideas they were having or the fun things they were discovered. He just wanted to be the same person he'd always been and, in Rome, that had annoyed her. But here?

Here, in his old room at the Lake House, sitting on the bare floor with the space around her echoing with everything different between them… Emily curled her knees to her chest and picked at the fussy dress she hated while looking up at their drawings faded on the wall. Fiver and Blackbird having wild adventures together, only needing each other because they were everything that was important. Blackbird didn’t need to sharpen all her edges in order to avoid fitting in too easily… and Fiver wasn’t alone again, locking himself away in his own head and finding a kind of company by himself that she could never give him.

She missed him so terribly but didn’t know how to turn back the clock and get him back without losing what she’d gained. She didn’t want to be the Blackbird who _only_ had him but didn’t have any sense of who she was—but she also didn’t want to be Emily who wasn’t Blackbird at all anymore because there was no Fiver beside her. Why couldn’t she have both?

So in the cold, unheated house, she sat alone, noting the irony of this; at school, where’d she’d been the one to change the most, it was Spencer who was isolated because of it… but here, at the place she’d always thought was home… she didn’t fit anymore. It was her who was alone.

And she guessed that she deserved that.

 

Inside the Big House, Spencer wasn’t feeling happy or content with how things had worked out at all. He was sitting on the couch with his mom, a blanket around their knees and the fire crackling quietly casting an orange light upon the tree that still had Ethan’s Christmas Rocking Hare atop it. Diana was reading to him and it was a wonderful reminder of being a child once again, instead of the fourteen-year-old he’d suddenly become… but that only just reminded him of how much he missed how it had used to be.

Aware of Elizabeth sitting by the fire in her favourite armchair, reading something that might be for fun but, Spencer knew, was more likely work despite it being Christmas Day, he looked at his mom and wondered if she knew what he was feeling, if she understood how strange being fourteen had turned out to be. For the first time since he was seven-years-old, he wished his dad was here—maybe he’d understand.

“Why are you looking so solemn, my boy?” Diana asked suddenly, lowering her book and studying him with an intent focus that made him squirm a bit to be placed under. “Talk to me. I do have some wisdom in this crazy brain.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” he said automatically, rejecting the concept of his mother being anything as simple as ‘crazy’. “And it’s nothing, Mom, honest. Keep reading. The next bit is my favourite.”

“He’s fighting with Emily,” Elizabeth said, her voice sudden in the room, like Spencer had been _aware_ that she was there but really only on the surface, his entire deeper focus far more interested in his mother’s lilting prose. “They’ve been at it for months. Honestly, I’m glad to never be fourteen again.”

“It is a very interesting age,” said Diana, which really didn’t help Spencer much with his current quandary. “Although perhaps not an apt word for your current experience, since interesting is something that occupies the mind in neither a pleasing nor displeasing way, and I think you’d probably list your current experience as displeasing.”

Spencer thought about that for a bit. “Not really,” he answered finally, glancing over longingly towards the door as though Emily would sense how much he missed having her around and come tearing through with her old exuberance, instead of the careful wariness she wore now. Like a cat who’d been kicked one too many times taking the place of the kitten it had once been. “And we’re not really fighting… I know how to fix fighting. We’ve fought before.”

“Viciously,” Elizabeth muttered, which Spencer thought was unfair. It wasn’t his fault that he and Emily were too good at knowing exactly how to make the other cry if they were angry—besides, they were also the best at _stopping_ each other crying when it came down to it. And they hadn’t had a real tear-worthy fight since they were twelve.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he finished glumly, seeing Elizabeth lay her hand flat on her paper, her gaze locked on the fire. Trapped in her own thoughts, and he wondered what she was making of things. “I miss her…”

Elizabeth looked away. Diana watched her do it.

“Have you told her that?” Diana asked, still watching Elizabeth’s body language. Spencer looked startled.

“No?”

“Well, then. Perhaps that’s a start.” At Diana’s words, Spencer nodded, his expression set and shoulders determined, standing and moving to the door. “Coat,” Diana reminded him, because she was still his mother, even now.

“Scarf,” Elizabeth added, because maybe she was a little bit his mother too. And Spencer grabbed both items before hurtling from the room on a quest to find his friend and tell her just why being different didn’t have to be so bad. As soon as he was gone, Elizabeth finally shifted in her chair, looking at Diana with such an expression of exhaustion that Diana hurt immediately for her, guilt slamming home at how many of Diana’s responsibilities Elizabeth had taken on and seemed to be drowning under, even if she tried to hide it.

“I would never say no to him coming home if it—” Diana began.

“Oh god, no, no, it’s not that. I’m not going to ask that, you need to focus on your own care.” Elizabeth hovered in the armchair for a moment, tensed between this second and the next when she accepted Diana’s wordless invitation to come to sit beside her, taking the space Spencer had vacated. There was a careful distance between them; Diana hoped that distance wouldn’t grow between their children. “Besides, Spencer is an exemplary child, even by my often-unfair standards. He does his school work promptly and without complaint, attends all his extra lessons and excels, is polite, is…” She stopped, cutting off what she’d been about to say.

Diana didn’t bother dancing around it. “You know, maybe Spencer isn’t the only one who should be telling Emily they miss her. Fourteen is a terrible age to be wanting a mother and finding no one there for you.”

“Emily doesn’t want a mother,” Elizabeth answered frankly. “And even if she did, I’ve proven over and over that I’m incapable of being so. Honestly, it’s a wonder you trusted me with Spencer—it’s a wonder I haven’t messed him up as completely as I have my daughter. You should see her _hair_ , when she thinks I’m not there to see it—and her clothes! And I think she’s been smoking, not that Spencer will tell me anything, and that’s another thing. Those _friends_ of hers, he doesn’t like them and I don’t either—I think they’re the cause of this rift.”

Diana patiently let Elizabeth vent. “Do you know her friends?”

“No, but Spencer—”

“Is fourteen,” Diana reminded her. “I don’t know them. I hardly know Emily anymore, she’s so different from the girl I knew before London—but I know Spencer. He writes to me every day still.” Elizabeth, judging from her startled glance, had forgotten that. “I see nothing alarming in the little he writes of those children, except perhaps one of them, that John. His ideas are concerning. But Spencer and Emily are children and they’re having children’s squabbles—whether he admits it or not, a partial cause of his removal from them is jealousy. That and Spencer has never been _good_ at being what society excepts of him, and those teenagers are not as radical as they like to think they are. They’re treading the same paths we did in our first years of college—”

“God, I hope not,” Elizabeth said, well aware of what paths they’d treaded and not entirely sure she wanted Emily doing the same.

“Just don’t…” Diana paused. She didn’t want to continue this conversation, she was hardly the one raising two teenagers while working a job that was more than full-time, but she also knew her friend. “When you’re hurting, you shut down. Don’t do that. Emily doesn’t respond well to that—look at her now, she’s trying to emulate it and pulling away from everyone.”

“I do not shut down. I compartmentalise. I simply cannot _feel_ everything every minute, or I couldn’t do my job. When they ask for Ambassador Prentiss, they do _not_ want to see a mother or a friend or—”

“A woman.” Diana’s mouth was grim, but she reached out to touch Elizabeth’s hand.

“Exactly. This is who I am. Emily knows that. She can still come to me and I can help her fix her problems, if only she’d tell me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be fixed, maybe she just wants to be _loved._ And that’s a downright lie—you do shut down. You did it to me when I married William. Seven years we didn’t speak, and all for what?”

“Because he was a mistake.” Elizabeth pulled her hand away, which was expected but no less aggravating when Diana could see her about to make all of her own kinds of mistakes again, but much more severely this time.

“He was _my_ mistake to make. Don’t take it so personally when the people you love disappoint you. The first time Emily messes up big—and she will and it will _not_ be something as small as a broken window, I can promise you that—don’t do what you did to me. If you walk out on her, you’ll never see her again. She’ll run as fast as she can go and by the time you realise she’s not coming back, she’ll be an adult without the time to spare for the mother who didn’t spare the time for her.”

Elizabeth knew; she wasn’t wrong.

That didn’t mean she liked it.

 

The gloomy winter sun was drooping, leaving her in the chilled shadows of the empty room, when Emily heard the gentle sound of the bedroom door opening. She wasn’t afraid though—only one person would find her here.

“I miss you,” Spencer said quietly from behind her, her pen pausing on the wallpaper.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” she replied. “You measured the distance between our rooms, remember?”

“Twenty-two feet between my bed to yours. I know. I remember. I’m not talking about physical distance, Emily, and you know that. I miss _us._ What are you drawing?”

He came closer, sitting down beside her on his knees and studying the wall carefully. She noted a gap between them that had never been there before and hurt for a moment before making a choice and sliding over so that their legs were touching, the gap vanishing with that simple move. Was it that simple? Could it be that simple?

“That’s me,” Spencer said suddenly, leaning closer to the wallpaper. “That’s Fiver. Where’s Blackbird?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, because she didn’t. “Guess she flew south for the winter and forgot to come home…”

Spencer looked at her, pausing for a second before he put his hand out to touch hers, startling at the chill of her skin. “You’re freezing. You should have come inside.”

Emily didn’t look at him, she’s couldn’t—if she looked, he’d see the tears beginning to track down her face. Because she wasn’t looking, she didn’t see him shrugging his coat off, but she felt the weight of it on her shoulders as he wrapped one side around her, still warm from his body. He slid into the other side with her and nestled onto her shoulder. They’d done this before, this sharing the one coat when she’d gotten so excited about something that she’d run off without hers, but this time felt awkward and strange in a way it had never felt before.

“I miss you too,” she said finally, finding the bravery she needed to say the words. “I like who I am now, Spencer—but I don’t like that it feels like I’m losing you. I don’t know how to stop that from happening.”

“You don’t need to stop it happening,” he told her, taking the pen from her hand and leaning over to add to her sketch of the lonely hare waiting for his friend. She watched him as he added her blackbird there, wings tucked over the hare’s back and keeping him warm. “You don’t need to stop what isn’t going to happen—you were never in danger of losing me. We promised each other, you and I, that we’d stay together—remember? We’re going to go to college together and get our degrees and become the dynamic science duo, or astronauts, or whatever we decide would be cool at the time.”

She sniffled, hugging him back with something unknotting slowly in her chest. Maybe it _was_ this simple. Maybe being fourteen wasn’t going to be all change…

“And I don’t have to stop hanging out with my friends to stay friends with you?” she asked him cautiously, not sure who she’d pick if forced to.

“I mean, maybe a little. You need to _study_ , you’re behind—we can’t go to college together if you never graduate because you’re busy being a cranky punk-rock drop-out or an angry goth.” He smiled as he said it, but it still stung.

“You should have faith in me,” Emily said, although honestly, he wasn’t _wrong._ “No way am I going to flunk out. My tutor is too smart to let that happen. Are we okay?”

“We’re okay,” he promised.

They sat in a comfortable quiet, enjoying each other’s company as Christmas Day slowly ticked to a close, before Spencer hauled her up on her feet and they left that empty room to return to the warmth of the Big House. Both their noses were red with the cold, their cheeks ruddy and hands unwieldy.

“Hey, you know that Fiona wants to kiss you, right?” Emily told Spencer, having been forced to listen to Fiona’s increasingly smitten ramblings about her friend and been incrementally more grossed out by them. Honestly, she _loved_ Spencer and even she didn’t think he was as great as Fiona seemed to. “She won’t shut up about it, keeps trying to come up with excuses to come over and hang out with just us three.”

“I know,” said Spencer. “I’m aware.”

“Well, why haven’t you done anything about it? She’s super pretty, if you’re into that.”

Spencer stopped on the path, forgetting that they were attached by the one coat and almost sending Emily skidding to the ground as she kept going and got yanked back. “Sorry,” he said as she picked herself up and glared at him. “I don’t know what you want me to do with that information.”

“Kiss her?!” Emily folded her arms, wondering why boys were so hopeless at this age. Wasn’t the answer obvious?

“But I don’t _want_ to. And besides, even if I did, I don’t know how. I’d embarrass myself.”

Emily laughed, the sound carrying in the cold air. “Kissing isn’t _that_ hard. Just don’t choke her with your tongue and you’ll be fine.”

Rolling his eyes, Spencer glanced at her. “What would you know about kissing?”

But she didn’t answer.

Oh, he thought. Oh…

“John would taste like ashes and bitterness,” he muttered, tamping down the weird twist of anger/worry/nervousness at this new realisation. “Maybe you’d be better off kissing Fiona…”

But Emily, in a startling show of maturity that she wouldn’t really emulate again for a few years yet, took his hand and simply said, “Me kissing John doesn’t mean anything about us, Spence. You don’t need to be scared that it’ll change what we are to each other.” Because, as she knew, Spencer didn’t want to kiss her, so the look on his face was just worry that she’d run off with John and leave him—which she wasn’t going to. This was _not_ going to change them, not if she could stop it.

But really, as Spencer wondered later that night, hadn’t it already?

 

Diana was showing Spencer around her room the hour before they were to leave her there and return to Rome, showing him the desk where she kept her correspondence and the shelves she was allotted for her books, overflowing with more than she was technically allowed—but they never bothered her about them, she assured him. He was sitting on her bed, slowly sifting through a box of letters she’d given him, smiling to find everything he’d ever written to her—so many words, all in his childish handwriting.

Suddenly, he realised that she’d fallen quiet, looking up to find her watching him intently.

“You’re so grown up now,” she said, hands covering her mouth like she was overcome with emotion. “Look at you… so calm and confident there. Where’s my shy boy?”

“I’m still shy, Mom… but Elizabeth has been helping me a bit with that, I guess. Ever since I got sick, she talks to me a lot—and really, no one is scarier than her, so it makes everything else seem a lot less intimidating. What’s a classroom of juniors have on an _ambassador?”_

Diana laughed, taking a seat beside him on the bed and sighing. “She wasn’t always so severe, I promise. She used to be so remarkably wild… I was captivated by her, I assure you. Never tell her I told you this—but the first night I moved into the dorm room I shared with her, she informed me that we could never be friends unless we both appreciated the stars and dragged me out to look at them. It was pouring rain and there she is, soaking wet and telling me to appreciate the sky because too many people took it for granted.”

That didn’t sound like Elizabeth Prentiss at all, Spencer thought… in fact, it sounded a lot more like… “Emily,” he murmured, shocked at that thought.

“Oh yes, Emily becomes more and more like the Elizabeth I knew with every passing year. The day that Emily shaves her head and declares herself self-actualised, then I’ll know that she’s actually a clone rather than a daughter.”

“Elizabeth shaved her _head?”_

“Twice!” Diana laughed, shuffling through the letters until she pulled something loose—a manila envelope hidden right down the bottom that she opened and carefully picked through before handing a single sheet to him. He read it disbelievingly.

_Sure, poetry is beautiful, Di, but it’s finite—imagine being something as beautiful as a flower made of silk. Immortal beauty. It would be the best fuck you to the natural order there is, taking two finite things—silk and a flower—and binding together into something that could last until time immemorial, if given the chance. In one hundred years, no one will understand or care for old poetry—but they’ll still look at that silk flower and shake their heads at the folly of its maker. I want to be like that. I want people to look at me and shake their heads because I shouldn’t be, not in the ordered world they’ve created. You make me feel like that. There’s no other time that I believe so thoroughly in my ability to change the world as when I’m with you—when semester begins and I’m back beside you, I can show you that._

Spencer read those words twice, his brain not quite computing… right up until it did.

“Mom…” he breathed, looking up. “You and…”

But she was looking out of the window with her expression unfocused and he recognised that look—she was at the end of whatever clarity she’d fought for to give them a good Christmas. He wondered if it was just exhaustion or if dredging up the past was like this, littered with minefields and danger.

“It was the sixties, baby,” she said finally, looking back at him with those same unnervingly distant eyes. “We were sure everything was going to change, but it didn’t really. She was still pushed into a marriage for political reasons, and persists in that marriage now despite it being evident to anyone with eyes that their union has dissolved. That’s what life does… it makes a stranger of who you believe you’ll be. Now, she’s a pretender and I’m mad. How tarnished our silk flowers have turned out to be…”

He knew that he should press her to rest, kiss her goodbye and walk from here to meet with Elizabeth outside. But he needed to know, and he was scared now that this could be the last time he found her this lucid. “I don’t understand why you married Dad. You must have loved him.”

“I loved you,” she said with calm acceptance. “As soon as I knew you were a possibility, I loved you wholly and absolutely. Perhaps that love blinded me to your father’s flaws, but we are what we are. I married him happily with the belief I was creating a perfect home for you to bloom in, the true beautiful thing I’d fought for. Spencer, I cannot bear to see you grounded—you must _fly._ I knew you would, as soon as I felt you kicking, I knew you were perfect. Prove it to the world! Don’t hide in Rome because you’re comfortable there, not if you’re ready for more.”

He stared at his shoes, the letter still in his hand. His mom had found something wonderful at college, something he suspected had changed her a lot more than she was letting on… could he? Was it worth staying her, keeping his promise, when he knew that if John asked, Emily would leave him in a heartbeat? He didn’t want to find beautiful things or a great and tragic love, but he wanted to learn everything he could and there was little at school now that he learned in class that he didn’t already know. “But Emily…”

“Is going to be an amazing, frightening woman when she’s grown—but right now she’s a confused, volatile, feckless girl and I can promise she’s not done being that yet, not at fourteen. I love her dearly and I want the best for her, but I also don’t want to see you stay on the ground because you’re so focused on helping her fly that you forget to spread your own wings. That would break my heart, and hers too when she comes back to herself and realises what your sacrifice means. Promise me you won’t hurt us like that, either of us.”

He kept staring at his shoes, at the scuff marks on the side he’d gotten chasing Emily up a tree, the shoelace that was a different colour than the other because he’d given up his old one one day when Emily had needed something to tie back her hair… if he did this and went to college, it would be right at the time when he’d lived more of his life with Emily than without her. Was that enough to stop her from vanishing from his life like he knew she was determined to vanish from her mother’s?

“Maybe at the end of this school year,” he said finally, making up his mind. “I’ll ask to do the exams then, if I’m ready.”

“You will be,” his mom promised him.

He didn’t doubt that, but he wondered… even if he was ready, would Emily be? 


	19. Emily Doubles Down

Spencer and Emily’s relationship returned to normal after that, relatively. Emily made sure to invite Spencer on every outing with her friends, no matter how sure she was that he wouldn’t like it. Spencer, in turn, found that he’d come to enjoy his own company enough that most of the time he was okay just staying home and reading a book or pursuing his own research projects—but that, just sometimes, he didn’t mind tagging along. He suspected that Emily had said something to John, or that maybe John’s dislike of him, to begin with, had been more about his wish to kiss Emily more so than not liking Spencer, because there was none of the tense awkwardness anymore. John simply ignored him, which Spencer preferred because it turned out, when John wasn’t forcing the matter, Fiona and Matthew liked him just fine. And he was happy to chatter to them about whatever was on his mind after finding them an interested audience, especially Matthew.

Fiona still watched him in a way that made him feel strange and uncomfortable, like his skin was on a bit wrong and it was trapping far too much heat. Every time he realised she was lingering near, he seemed to lose all control of his extremities, falling over nothing and stumbling into everything. He was a disaster, completely, but she seemed to like that.

And, as they hurtled fast into what would turn out to be a wild 1985, Emily found something that she’d been threatening to find for the past two years.

Trouble.

 

Elizabeth had been telling them for months that the dignitaries they had coming through on this weekend were _important_ and possibly career-changing for her and that, if they couldn’t behave—this she’d said while looking at Emily—over the dinner that they were required to attend with the consular family then she would make excuses for their absences. Both Emily and Spencer had sworn to be on their best behaviour, but Emily was _plotting._ Spencer could tell.

“I know you’re up to something,” he called through her closed door, the singular greatest sign that Emily was going to shatter expectations. “You only ever lock me out now when you’re up to something.” This was probably because, ever since the appendicitis, he’d formed a strange and abiding friendship with Elizabeth—which meant that Emily no longer trusted him with the business of troublemaking. Or maybe it had been after when he’d realised that his mother had loved this woman and that meant there had to be _something_ there. Over time, he thought maybe he’d caught glimpses of it. In the meantime, she was interesting company and very, very clever and she didn’t treat him like a child at all, which he appreciated—and Emily very much did not.

From behind the door came the thump thump thump of Emily’s new music device, a compact disk player that she’d saved up hungrily for and that Spencer had contributed to for her fourteenth birthday and Christmas. It was now used to blast Siouxsie and the Banshees at ear-achingly loud levels when she was huddled away in there ignoring everyone. which was often.

Resigned to disaster, Spencer left her there to probably sustain permanent inner ear damage and went off to get ready for the dinner, his three-piece suit sitting ready on his bed for him.

 

Disaster was right. When he went to walk downstairs, fixing up his cuffs, he looked up to find Emily already waiting to greet the guests by the front doors. They were early, so they were alone—and he stopped mid-step and _stared._

“Did you drop a toaster in the bath?” he asked, trying to figure out how she’d gotten her hair to stick out so _violently_ without the use of electrocution _._

Emily looked back up to him and grinned, the expression startlingly vivid when her eyes were so starkly lined with black eye makeup, making the whites pop in a way that set his teeth on edge. With her hair teased out into wild spikes around her head and her clothes… her _clothes._ She wore the dress Elizabeth had bought for her and instructed her to wear, a demure sapphire-blue sashed neatly at her waist, but she’d either cut or sewn the hem higher in order to bare her fish-netted legs, arms similarly bedecked and with heavy leather cuffs on her wrists. Even her lips were painted black, her nails a dangerous red.

“What do you think?” she asked, enjoying his utter shock.

“What do I think?” he repeated dumbly, unsure how to answer that. “I think you’re going to get _disowned.”_

“Brilliant,” was her smug reply.

 

Elizabeth, upon catching sight of Emily standing there waiting for her to enter with the entire assembled family behind her, went from stunned to blank-faced faster than Spencer had ever seen. He watched with horrified fascination as the two Prentisses proceeded to stare each other down across the foyer as the group behind Elizabeth tittered quietly and then fell silent, waiting for an explanation.

“Hi, Mommy,” Emily said with saccharine sweetness, beaming at her mother as she executed a perfect curtsey.

“Madam Ambassador,” Spencer rasped out, bowing shallowly to the group. “Honoured guests.”

Elizabeth ignored them, turning and, with a calm that was glacial, introducing them: “Ambassador Farnese, this is my daughter, Emily, and my ward, Spencer. Emily, unfortunately, will not be joining us for dinner as she has an audition for a pantomime that she’s decided to undergo in order to further her artistic endeavours. I believe this one is quite topical, based as it is around the reckless disregard of youth to heed their elders’ firm warnings of what they’ll face if they insist on the path they’re taking, despite all warnings to the contrary. I look forward to seeing what she learns from the endeavour.” She looked at Emily, her smile immediately vanishing the grin from Emily’s face, even Spencer shrinking back from it. “You’d better hurry to your room and finish preparing. We wouldn’t want you to disappoint anyone with your absence.”

Emily didn’t say a word, just vanished from the room like she’d never been there. Spencer wasn’t sure if that was planned or not—it was equally likely either way.

The guests followed Elizabeth, Spencer gritting his teeth and trailing them into the dining room, preparing himself for a night of polite chatter and endless questions about his intellectual aptitude. At least this time, he knew which fork was which.

And at least he wasn’t Emily right now.

 

The fallout wasn’t as crushing as expected, at least at first. Elizabeth had vanished into Emily’s room, through the intimidatingly closed door and into the thudding void of the music within. Silence had followed. Then more silence. Then, more silence. Spencer jittered around his room, occasionally poking his head out to see if there was movement from that room yet—yelling, screams, sirens, _anything._ The silence was so absolute that he was pretty sure they’d both killed each other, resigning himself to being packed back to the States on the back of their double homicide.

Within the room, there were no voices raised. Emily was silently staring at her mother, her eyes cold behind the thick makeup as Elizabeth calmly and with absolute surety told her how utterly disappointed she was in what had happened today, and just what would follow such a disrespectful show of crude rebellion.

“You have what many children never have a hope of accessing,” Elizabeth finished her diatribe with. “Since you clearly cannot appreciate how privileged you are, or you simply don’t care for everything I do for you, then we’ll see how well you fare doing without.”

“I don’t care,” Emily said in a low, hateful voice. “Although if throwing material gifts at me was never enough to make me love you, what makes you think removing them is going to do anything?”

Elizabeth just sighed. “You’re grounded,” she said, unsurprisingly. “Your punishment for that farce downstairs is a month of home detention. No seeing your friends. No trips out except for church and school. I’ll be informing your teachers that you’re not to sit with them on your breaks, requesting that you have structured tutelage inside instead. On top of that, since you’ll be spending far more time at home over that period, I’m tripling your etiquette lessons. Spencer’s remain once a week—you will see your tutor three times a week and, for two of those, I will be making a special effort to sit in upon the lessons to assess you.”

Honestly, Emily thought, as unpalatable as that all was and as tedious as it was going to be to wiggle out of the school restrictions—sneaking out at home would be _easy—_ it was the most parenting Elizabeth had ever done. A nice change.

But she didn’t say this; she just said, “Whatever,” and was silently surprised that this was it.

“Now,” said Elizabeth, dashing those hopes. “That’s just your punishment for today. On top of that, here’s your punishment for being a disrespectful and ungrateful brat who I can now tell that I’ve spoiled for far too long.”

Emily braced for it. Moments later, Spencer, sitting down the hall wondering how to tell Diana that they were dead, finally heard her start yelling.

Thank god, he thought. Emily’s alive.

 

It was with a furious kind of resignation that Emily watched her mother’s punishment take place. All of her clothes and her makeup, everything she’d so carefully and painstakingly picked out over the past year and a half, all of it was gone. Elizabeth had the maids help her clean out the lot, not leaving behind a single leather bracelet. Just, gone—donated, Elizabeth informed her, and perhaps that would teach her to have a care for where her possessions came from. It hurt more than Emily would ever admit to watch her room ransacked so efficiently that, before the clothing was replaced with Elizabeth ‘approved’ outfits, Emily wandered through it and numbly noted that what had been left behind was barely really anything at all. Blackavar, the two dolls, and her books, essentially. That was it.

Even her CD player, the one Spencer had helped her save for, was gone. All her CDs, her precious fledgling collection of albums, gone. Emily stared at the empty space on her dresser and, right as she registered the loss, Elizabeth walked in.

“Your bank account has been frozen,” she informed Emily coolly. “For the next month, if you need anything, you will need to submit your request to me and only me— _not_ Spencer. If I find that he’s been buying anything for you, then he’s been warned that his account will be frozen too for the duration of your punishment. Are you listening, Emily?”

Emily was listening, but mostly she was still staring at her dresser. “What did you do with my CD player?” she asked, feeling sick. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t _fair—_ it wasn’t her money that had gone into it to be lost. It was Spencer’s too, and she knew he was careful with his money, so careful. He wasn’t like her. He didn’t buy things for the sake of having them and he didn’t express himself with his appearance—all of his money was prudently budgeted and planned out and used almost exclusively on things he loved too much to do without.

But he’d helped buy her the CD player, and now it was gone because of something she’d done and her mother’s utter cruelty.

“Donated,” Elizabeth confirmed ruthlessly. “I warned you, Emily, there would be no—”

“It wasn’t yours to donate!” Emily screamed at her, whirling with a snarl of rage tearing out of her chest and spurring tears that burned. “That’s not fair, you _witch_!”

And she launched out of there, not caring now if Elizabeth made good on her final, more dire threat: that if Emily continued to misbehave despite the punishment she was undergoing, than Elizabeth would have no choice but to reconsider her stance on boarding school in order to remove the final thing Emily had that she loved: Spencer.

 

The next two weeks passed in a cautious crawl. Everyone was waiting for an explosion from one quarter or another. Emily, who’d been informed that she would serve her own meals and do her own laundry, rebelled in small, expected ways. At first, she simply wore her pyjamas everywhere, even to school. Spencer assumed that she’d been expecting Elizabeth to stop her at the door. Instead, Elizabeth simply shrugged and told her to get in the car. He wasn’t sure who came out the winner of that particular scuffle, since Emily seemed to _enjoy_ everyone looking at her dancing rabbit pyjamas and got more compliments than laughs out of it. Next, she attempted to wear the same clothes for the entire duration of the punishment. Elizabeth didn’t even have to intervene on that; Emily was far too pernickety about her appearance to stick with it for long. She did, however, appear to be subsiding solely on buttered toast and orange juice, which was making the cook wail and wring her hands about “starving the poor child, she’ll be nothing but bones by the end of it, it’s _inhumane_.” But Elizabeth wouldn’t budge.

“I’m out of clothes,” Emily announced on this morning, walking into his room with nothing but a towel on. “Lend me some.”

 “You could _wash_ yours,” he pointed out, dutifully standing to open his drawers anyway.

“No way, then she wins. Close your eyes, I’m getting dressed.”

He did as he was told, waiting patiently until she informed him he could look again. Opening his eyes, he found her standing there in his trousers and a pressed shirt, smirking. It was such a strange look on her that he couldn’t _stop_ looking.

“Can I borrow one of your dinky vests? I’m going full Spencer today.” But he’d been distracted by his shirt. It sat… weirdly on her. He didn’t know if the material of his shirt was different from hers, or maybe they were cut differently, but something was off. Emily leaned down to wave her hand in front of his eyes. “Hey, earth to Spencer—why are you staring at my chest?”

He answered honestly. “Because you _have_ a chest. Uh. Breasts, I mean. I think?”

Emily blinked, before looking down at herself. “Well, yeah,” she answered, frowning. “Duh? What about them?”

“I’ve never noticed…” And now he was feeling weird for having pointed it out, trying to wiggle away from the seeping embarrassment of this moment. “Um. They’re kinda obvious in that shirt… I’m not sure you can, uh, wear it to school. Without a, um, bra… or something.”

This was it, he decided. He was going to die right here, curl up into a shame-filled ball and just die.

“Hmm,” said Emily, staring down at herself. “Obvious, you say…”

Oh no, thought Spencer, but the damage was done. Elizabeth thinned her mouth but said nothing, Emily didn’t seem to care that several girls at school made jokes about the temperature, and Spencer spent the entire day in a state of high anxiety imagining how he’d feel if someone was teasing _him_ about an involuntary bodily response to cold. Possibly the worst of it—for Spencer, who squirmed uncomfortably throughout the entire short exchange—was lunchtime, when Emily slipped away from the teachers who were supposed to be watching her and appeared where the others were all sitting behind the toilets, Spencer looking up from where he was tutoring Matthew in physics and seeing her arrive in a  jacket the teachers had made her wear. Even as he watched and inwardly groaned, she pulled it off and tossed it into the grass, sprawling beside it.

John looked up, stared very clearly at her chest, and then smiled in a way that instantly had Spencer’s back up, his hand curling around the pen he was holding. “Nice tits,” he said. Matthew was looking anywhere _but_ Emily, and Fiona simply had one eyebrow raised. “I’m a fan. Any chance of a peek?”

“Only if you want to get slapped, perve,” Emily answered pertly, and that was that.

But Spencer hated him for it anyway. “I don’t like the way he talks to you,” he said later to Emily, probably unwisely since he knew she’d take it for jealousy—which he knew this _wasn’t_. He’d have been just as irate about it being Fiona or Matthew if someone had talked to them like that.

“How does he talk to me?” Emily asked, eyeing him warily as she tried to judge his intent here. The last thing they needed was a sequel to the ‘John’s going to change us’ rift.

“Like he needs to sexualise you to prove a point,” Spencer said bluntly, seeing Fiona turn her head like she was listening. “You wouldn’t let Matthew talk to you like that, but you _flirt_ with John when he does it and it demeans you.”

“It only demeans me if I let it,” she said back, voice sharp enough that he knew he’d better drop it. “John doesn’t mean it like that. He’s just messing around—and besides, so what if he _is_ sexualising me? We’re the same age and, what, I don’t deserve to feel attractive to someone? God knows you jump all over yourself to make sure I know how unattractive I am to you.”

“I never say—” Spencer began, but she was already stalking away. “I never say that!” he yelled after her, for Fiona’s benefit at least. “I didn’t mean that…”

“Don’t worry, Spencer,” Fiona said. “She never stays mad at you for long.”

“We’re _kids_ ,” Spencer said back, anxiety spiking again at even more evidence that he was wrong and Emily was trying to race to what she saw as ‘adulthood’ without any idea of the hurdles she had to leap to get there. “She’s going to get _hurt.”_

“Naw,” Fiona said, beginning to hurry after Emily. “John won’t hurt her, he likes her too much!”

That wasn’t much of a comfort to Spencer—after all, John was just a kid too. What did any of them know about this kind of stuff?

And he was sure that they were heading towards disaster.


	20. It Was Only A Kiss…

Elizabeth was away in Milan for the weekend when Spencer came home from his art history lessons, having noted that Emily was _not_ there and feeling rather nervous about that. Her skipping lessons wasn’t going to make Elizabeth feel any kinder towards her and it definitely asn’t going to help her fix the grades that Spencer knew were slipping hard. The house was quiet, the security detail playing chess by the front door, one of them asking Spencer for advice as he jogged past.

“He’s going to have you in mate in three moves,” Spencer informed him after a glance at the board.

“Bah!” the guard called, slapping his knee and laughing. “We should have never helped you with your Italian—you’re a bearer of bad news!”

“Not for me!” laughed the other. Spencer just smiled and slipped past, making his way past the kitchens to say hello to the staff there and to get an orange and a fresh mug of coffee given to him before darting upstairs to change into around-the-villa clothes. He’d learned quite early that it was advantageous to have a good relationship with those who worked in the homes they stayed at and had thus made sure that he always greeted them upon returning to the home. Before he'd even turned the corner into the hall with their rooms, he could hear Emily laughing and detoured to her room.

Emily, who’d snuck Fiona into the villa through her window, heard the polite three and a half knocks at her door and sighed to see Fiona brighten immediately. “Come in, Spence,” she called, scowling at Fiona so she knew how she felt about her being gross about her friend. ‘Leave him alone,’ she mouthed to her before Spencer slipped in, pausing when he saw Fi there.

“Hi,” he murmured, going shy and blushy. Emily rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know you were allowed to have friends over.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Emily said glibly. “But what Mother doesn’t know couldn’t possibly hurt her, right?”

“Right,” answered Spencer doubtfully. “Should I go?”

“No, no!” Fiona patted the bed beside her, almost upsetting the pile of magazines she had resting there with the ferocity of the movement. “Come sit with us! We’re just talking anyway. And practising.”

“Practising what?” Spencer sat next to Emily, sipping his coffee and leaning around her to stare at the magazines, seeing the same face on top of the uppermost cover as what bedecked Emily’s wall. The magazine was in English, _Smash Hits_ scrawled across the top.

“Makeup,” Emily declared, reaching down for a pot of something beside her and inching closer to Fiona. “I’m showing her how to do her eyeliner like Siouxsie Sioux.”

Spencer felt the smallest hint of danger encroaching, although he was interested too. He’d watched Emily completely reshape her face using makeup and a how-to guide from a magazine before—it was a fascinating process. And he was still curious about how she’d made her hair look so crazy at the dinner, having seen the style she’d had it suddenly becoming popular as he’d walked around the streets of Rome over the last month.

“Can I watch?” he asked as he unpeeled his orange and broke it into segments to share.

“Of course,” they told him happily. And, ignoring that small instinct of worry, he did.

 

Honestly, it really shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to him when Fiona suddenly looked at him and said, “You know, Spencer would look super pretty in makeup.” His instincts had tried to warn him, after all.

Emily turned to study him critically, not just the looking at him that she did every day but this time with thought to his facial structure and features. “I don’t know…” she said at first because he wasn’t the kind of boy who _wore_ makeup, not like the goth kids at school or John when he was feeling spunky. But then she squinted and looked closer, noting cheekbones under the puppy fat still on his cheeks. “Spence, stay still.”

“I don’t—” he began, but she’d already reached over and taken his glasses as Fiona slid from the bed and shuffled on her knees around Emily to peer up at him too. Nervous now that all he could see of the room was indistinct forms and colours, he sat stock still and hoped they’d stop paying attention to him soon so he could keep silently observing Fiona showing Emily how to cover spots.

“He’s got pretty lashes,” Fiona announced, Spencer widening his eyes with fear. “And gorgeous curls in his hair. Can we try something, Spence? Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?”

“It’ll be fun,” Emily informed him, already reaching for the eyeliner. “And we’ll wash it off after, promise.”

Spencer sighed. Anything to keep them happy, he guessed. And at least they were together.

“Alright,” he said, glad that none of them owned any way of taking photographic evidence of this day.

 

It took them two hours of messing around to be happy with the result, but one of Spencer’s best qualities had always been his endless patience. Emily vanished at a certain point, darting out of the room and leaving him and Fiona there. Fiona had been distracted by drawing on his cheek with the foundation brush she was using, giggling helplessly when she was done. He was pretty sure it was probably a penis, but careful focusing on the pattern the brush made on his skin made it much more likely it was actually a love heart.

“Having fun?” he asked her, earning even more giggles before she used her thumb to blend it better.

“Your skin is a bit darker than Emily’s, the foundation doesn’t really suit,” she warned him. “I might wipe it off. Where’d Emily go?”

He’d reached behind himself to grab the makeup wipes they were using, offering them to her and sitting obediently still so she could clean the foundation off. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Who knows with her—”

But Emily had reappeared. “Mother’s not home until tomorrow,” she declared, “so we might as well have a bit of fun, right?”

Spencer looked at her and then at her shirt, which she’d pulled out in order to carry what appeared to be an armful of small bottles of… liquor?

“Oh no,” he said, suddenly recognising what she was holding as the miniatures that were supplied to the kitchen in order to have a range of testers for large diplomatic parties. “Emily, no.”

“Emily, yes,” she said excitedly, shuffling in and carefully dumping the lot on the bed in a wave of tinkling glass, dropping a book she’d had under her arm on top. He picked that up and read the cover as she hurried to the door and locked it, finding that it was a serving size guide with the entire back half devoted to small descriptions of the beverages supplied. “Look how _many_ there are! I grabbed one of each!”

“We’d get in an awful lot of trouble if we got caught,” Fiona said nervously.

“We’d get awfully _drunk_ trying every one of those,” Spencer warned.

“Nonsense,” said Emily. “We’ll just have a mouthful of each, like a wine tasting. We won’t get drunk. And it’ll be _fun_ —Spencer, you can tell us facts about them as we try them. Come on, we’re fourteen now. Sneaky drinking is required.” She looked at Spencer, knowing that he was the likeliest out of all of them to put a stop to this. “You’re welcome to leave if you want, I’m not going to make you. You can go do homework or read or something.”

He looked at the bottles. If they weren’t going to get drunk, maybe… and he really didn’t want to leave when they’d been having so much _fun_. “Alright, I’ll stay, but on one condition.”

“What’s that?” she asked him.

“We do my eyeliner _before_ we start drinking.”

 

Emily was on the bed, lining up the little bottles in neat, glittering lines. Spencer lay on the floor with Fiona, happily reading serving sizes from a chart in there as they quizzed him on it. There were still more full bottles than there were empties, the empties next to him in two groups: the nopes and the yums. There were more nopes than yums, the small bottle of Sambuca not only in the nopes but also on the carpet from where Emily had sipped it and then immediately coughed it out.

“So, let me get this straight, how much did you say a hogshead is?” Fiona asked, her cheeks red and eyes shiny.

Spencer squinted at the book again, his vision a little wobbly but only if he let it wobble. It was a weird feeling he wasn’t sure he liked, feeling really sober except for the parts of him that didn’t feel sober at all. But he was doing fine, they all were, even if they were a bit more giggly than usual; he blamed the adrenaline of breaking the rules, or possibly the second serving of the amaretto they’d all gone back for. “A hogshead is either six firkins or three kilderkins,” he informed them.

“Right,” said Fiona, nodding seriously. “And how much was a kilderkin?”

He looked at the book. “Two firkins.”

Emily began to giggle. “And a firkin?” she asked in-between giggles.

He looked down again, feeling his own laugh beginning to bubble up, barely able to get the words out before giving in. “It’s… two pins. Why is it so needlessly _complicated?”_

But the others were laughing too hard to answer.

“Try this one,” Emily managed, rolling off the bed and offering a bottle to Fiona, who sniffed it first. “It’s so red!”

“Campari,” Fiona read out to Spencer before sipping from the tiny bottle and wrinkling her nose. “Oh gross, it’s so bitter. And it smells like sour.”

Spencer took it from her as she passed it over, sniffing it and recoiling. “Pass,” he said, but Emily shook her head.

“No passing, those are the rules. You made me drink the sambuca, now _drink.”_

He did, hating every minute of it. Give him the sweet drinks any time. “Urgh,” he said, feeling it settle heavily in his stomach. “That one doesn’t feel good…” He put the empty into the nope section before flipping through to the Cs and skimming for it. “Oh. It recommends mixing that one. Ewww it has _orange peels_ in it.”

“Alcohol is _wild_ ,” Fiona declared. “What’s next?”

“Frangelico,” Emily read. “Oh no, look—the bottle is a little monk.” She held it up and laughed at the bottle, Spencer paging through fast to find the F section. “It smells like hazelnuts!”

Spencer liked hazelnuts, perking up a bit when he saw that it was usually served with coffee. Emily sipped from it first, passing it to him next. And it was nice, despite the alcohol taste he was quickly adjusting to underlying the hazelnut. They were all finding that the more they drunk, the easier it went down, which was a strange thing to learn. “Your turn,” he said, hiccupping a bit on the drink before trying to hand it to Fiona and finding his hand wouldn’t quite go in a proper straight line. “Oh no, my hand has gone weird…” And his mouth hurt from smiling and laughing, Emily’s careful hairdo coming loose as she hung from the bed and watched them.

“Thanks, Spence,” Fiona said with a smile that was flushed and shy, taking the bottle from him with their fingers lingering together. He watched her drink from it, the sudden realisation that her lips were touching what his had slamming home despite how many bottles they’d already shared. It was a weird feeling, hammering hard into his head and then spreading throughout his body, and he shifted uncomfortably, suddenly feeling hot.

“I’m going to get some water,” Emily announced, leaping from the bed like she hadn’t drunk anything at all before stumbling against the wall. “ _Whoa_. Okay. Wow… don’t stand up. Whoop!”

“Need a hand?” he asked her, turning and feeling everything turn with him. He was suddenly drunk with no realisation of where the line had been crossed, distantly dismayed by that. “I’d like some water too.”

“Me too, please,” Fiona said, lying down instead of sitting up.

But Emily said that she was fine, slipping from the room and leaving them there alone.

 

Emily bounced down the stairs, giddy with how much fun they were having and sure they wouldn’t be caught. The maids were in bed, the security staff patrolling outside—this had been a _wonderful_ idea. And so grown up! She bet none of the others had tried as many different kinds of drinks as they had now, like they were cultured and… she had to pause, searching for the word before she focused fully on not falling down the grand flight of stairs between her and the kitchens. Aware that balancing three glasses right now was probably beyond her, she hummed as she skipped around, grabbing a serving tray and three bottles of water and a couple of the bags of snacks they kept in the pantry. Maybe Fiona could stay the night? Surely her dad wouldn’t mind and it was Saturday tomorrow. Emily had never had a real sleepover and wouldn’t it be fun to have this night be a night of lots of different firsts?

This was what she was thinking as she crept back upstairs, deciding to scare the others by yelling _boo_ at them when she leapt into the room. Because of this, she was careful not to make a sound as she snuck into the room, tray in hands, opening her mouth to shout before stopping, stunned.

Spencer and Fiona were still on the floor where she’d left them, but they were _kissing._

“Whoa,” said Emily, watching them hurtle apart and whirl around to stare at her, Fiona looking guilty and Spencer dumbfounded.

 

Spencer didn’t know how it had happened. One minute he’d been happily talking about the fascinating history of Frangelico, the next Fiona had been next to him and asking if she could kiss him. She’d been polite about it, her cheeks bright red and eyes averted when he looked, startled, at her.

“I know you don’t really like being touched so I thought I should ask,” she’d said nervously, biting at her lip like she was forcing herself to keep chattering to stop from panicking. Spencer watched her mouth, captivated by how her teeth were turning her lip white under her light lipstick, a little coral pink left on the two incisors. “But I really want to kiss you normally and you’re _really_ cute in eyeliner, I told you you would be, and I just—”

Emily probably wouldn’t believe it if he told her later, but it wasn’t Fiona who'd initiated. Grasped by some kind of reckless abandon, Spencer had thrown himself forward and pressed his mouth against hers, not super sure what he was supposed to do next. Noses bumping painfully and his glasses getting knocked askew, he stared at her before pulling away, very sure he’d done that completely wrong.

“Sorry,” he stammered, his turn to panic and his lips burning at the touch. He touched his tongue to them gently, feeling the sticky trace of her lipstick on his upper lip. “I messed that up, sorry, I’ve never—”

“It’s okay, neither have I,” she said quickly. “May I?”

He nodded, tightening his fists on his legs as he closed his eyes and tensed. But the expected kiss didn’t come; instead, he felt her gently taking his glasses off him and opened his eyes to find her carefully closing them and placing them safely on the bed. And then she was leaning closer, and then she was close, and then they were—

Oh, he thought, his brain stumbling. _This_ was kissing. It was still weird, but nowhere near as painfully violent. And she smelled nice as he closed his eyes and simply focused on the touch of her lips to his before she broke away and touched her mouth with her fingertips.

“There’s lipstick on you,” she murmured, staring at his mouth.

“I know,” he said dumbly. But he didn’t wipe it away and neither did she, just touching it with her fingers before leaning over and kissing the corner of his mouth again with the gentlest touch of hers. A wash of something heated and unsteady swamped him, wanting more and less and _something_  as he abruptly began to panic about whether he was about to have an incredibly inappropriate reaction to her proximity. She couldn’t possibly miss it and he pulled away, stammering out some kind of excuse before she was kissing him again, this time much, much _more._

And then he didn’t really know what was happening, until Fiona yelped, “Emily!” and he reeled around to find his best friend staring at them with her mouth hanging open.

“Oh no,” he gasped, horror striking home. Without even waiting for her to say anything, he bolted up—and _then_ it hit him how drunk he was, but he used the momentum of his falling to goad him on faster—and fled from her room and into his, where he could safely close the door against the world and pretend none of that had ever happened.

 

Emily waited until Fiona was asleep to creep into Spencer’s room, finding him lying on the floor with his hands behind his head, watching the snowflake patterns his globe cast on the ceiling. He didn’t look at her when she walked in, so she took that as permission and went and laid down next to him, her head by his and silently watching the patterns too.

“I threw up,” Spencer said suddenly.

Emily laughed softly. “So did we,” she admitted, still feeling woozy. “Did you have some water?”

“Yeah…”

They were quiet again for a while, neither really sure what the other was thinking.

Finally, Emily spoke. “You don’t need to be embarrassed if you like like her,” she said. “I don’t care that you were kissing her. Like I keep telling you, _we_ won’t change just because our feelings about _others_ do.”

“That’s not why I’m embarrassed,” Spencer replied, misery in his voice. “I’m embarrassed because I shouldn’t have kissed her at all. I _don’t_ like her, I mean, not in a kissing way. I just wanted to… know. And now I’m forever going to be the first person she ever kissed and I wasn’t even good at it, so I’ve ruined what should be amazingly special for her, which is a rotten thing for me to do. She’s my friend and I’m going to hurt her when I tell her all this.”

“Oh, Spencer, you stupid doughnut.” Emily laughed at the look on his face as he turned and stared at her. “She knows this! Fiona’s not dumb, she knows the only thing you want to kiss is physics—”

“That’s… not a possible thing…”

“—it doesn’t bother her. She doesn’t _really_ want to date you, she just likes the feeling of having a crush on someone and you’re a safe person to do so since she knows you’re not going to reciprocate unless she turns into a library or something. And she kissed you tonight because she was a bit drunk and she thinks kissing is nice and wanted to prove that and because I _guess,_ if you twist my arm, you really do look incredibly hot in eyeliner.”

There was so much to unpack in that statement that Spencer wished he was sober enough to do so, his entire cognitive focus working on it and still only coming up with the conclusion that fourteen-year-old girls were _completely_ insane.

“Still,” he said, feeling defensive. “I wish I wasn’t so bad at kissing… at least she’d have a nice first memory then.”

“Oh, pfft.” Emily sat up, dragging him up with her. “You can’t be that bad. Kiss me.”

He blinked.

“What?”

“Kiss _me,”_ she demanded again. “Show me. I’ll tell you if you’re bad or not.”

“Going to compare me to John?” Spencer asked, not entirely sure he liked the concept of that idea. “Also, you shouldn’t really kiss people when you’re dating someone…”

“I’m not dating him,” she said pertly. “I can kiss who I want. Come on—either kiss me or I’m going to go wake Fiona up and get her to describe the kissing to me so I can evaluate it like how you taught me to evaluate media.”

That sounded like an incredibly unpleasant experience for him, and so he looked at her mouth and frowned, trying to figure out the logistics of this. Her mouth was smaller than Fiona’s, but her nose longer, and did he really want to do this? He was still dealing with the guilt of kissing one girl he didn’t love, did he need the guilt of kissing _two?_

He’d gone from having kissed no one to arguing in his head about kissing too many, all in one night. Being fourteen was a roller-coaster, he was finding.

Emily just waited patiently, well aware that he’d come around soon enough, once he logicked himself into it. And he did, breathing hard before scrunching his eyes shut and leaning forward to gently press his lips against the corner of her mouth.

“You missed,” she told him, trying not to laugh and failing, earning a glare from him. “Sorry, but you looked so intent, it’s _funny_. Did you miss with Fiona?”

“No,” he muttered, looking sulky. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Come on, Spencer,” she coaxed. “It’s just _kissing_. I don’t like it much, but it’s _easy_. It’s not like it’s sex.” His head snapped up at that, focus narrowing on her. Suddenly, she felt like he was studying every part of her, searching for some kind of answer for the question he was wondering. To stop him assuming, she quickly added, “Not that I know much about sex. Yet.”

“Yet?” There was the tone of voice that immediately irritated her, as Spencer latched onto that titbit and started worrying intently about her. “Is he pushing you into it? You’re fourteen—”

“Which is the age of consent in Italy, I _checked,_ ” she reminded him fiercely. “Don’t lecture me. You’re not my mom, and I wouldn’t like you if you were—so don’t become her.”

That shut him up like she'd known it would, as he looked away with a glum twist to his mouth. “I just don’t want you hurt…”

Ouch. She hated the way he could do that, go from annoyingly stick-in-the-ass to sweet all at once. “You don’t need to protect me. I’m a big girl, I can make my own decisions.”

Wisely, he didn’t point out that those decisions could also be big mistakes. Instead, he just fumbled for something else to talk about. “You don’t like kissing?”

“No.” She really didn’t. It was all tongue and hands and a feeling like she was being smothered. She liked the rush that came with it though, the closeness of a person beside her, and the knowledge that she was doing something real, something that those biddies at church and her mother would gasp to know she was doing. There was a danger in it—that was what she liked, just like the underlying violence in the punk music she listened to, the hints of fierce rebellion. “But come on—one kiss. Let’s see how you go.”

He sighed, shoulders slumping as he leaned over and paused, waiting for her to line herself up so they could bring their mouths together. And he wasn’t much of a kisser, not really—he kept his eyes open, which was unnerving, and he didn’t move his lips so it was a bit like kissing the marble busts down at the school—but Emily did her best with what he was giving her.

And then there was a single second where he seemed to forget his distaste at kissing his friend and his guilt at what he’d done earlier, and where he just _kissed_. Emily suddenly found his mouth much softer against hers, suddenly so much more receptive, with no tongue and no bitter ashy aftertaste and no pushy hands. Just the gentle brush of their mouths, a soft intake of breath against her, and then he was pulling away looking grouchy and leaving her feeling a little surprised.

“There,” he grumbled, flopping back to the floor. “Now you can go and gossip to Fiona about how bad I am at kissing.”

She laid down next to him, touching her mouth with a kind of startled aftershock that she never got with John. That hadn’t been tongue-filled and suffocating at _all._ “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I think that was lovely.”

“Oh,” he said. “Thank you.”

And they never mentioned it again.


	21. Stitches for Whiskers

The month was up and Emily was duly returned access to her bank account, allowed out of the home, and to sit with her friends at lunch once more despite the fact that the removal of these things hadn’t really stopped her enjoying them anyway. It did not, however, cause the return of her donated clothing, which she was livid about.

And the space on her dresser where her CD player had once sat remained empty. Every night she looked at it and knew: she would never, ever forgive her mother for this.

Aside from that, life returned to normal for some time. The only change was that, after Elizabeth had been late one afternoon to Emily’s etiquette lessons and walked in right as the tutor had informed Emily that she had a repellant smile that explained why her mother disapproved of her, was that that tutor was not only promptly fired but also, Emily suspected, would never again be working within Rome. And that was the end of that, Elizabeth calling both children into her office and informing them that if an adult was to ever speak to them like that again that they were to tell her immediately—and that they were also not to take _any_ notice of the words said, since anyone who said such despicable and untrue things was clearly unworthy of notice.

Spencer, from then onwards, always held those words dear, because people were often cruel to him without reason but now he had confirmation that he didn’t have to listen.

Emily just shrugged.

 

“Are you sneaking out again?” Spencer asked Emily as she burst into his room asking if he’d seen her purse and watch. “It’s late and we have class in the morning. _And_ you have two papers due that I know you haven’t started.”

“I’ll write them tomorrow,” she said, sagely side-stepping his disapproval. She bounced over to where he was sitting at his desk surrounded by textbooks, patting his cheek and earning a scowl in return. “Don’t worry about me, Spence, I’m an intellectual.”

“You are _not_. I’m taking the final exams to graduate at the end of the school year and they won’t let you sit them with me unless you’re _brilliant_ , Emily, you know this. You’re still only on the junior curriculum—you need to start your final year, otherwise—”

“Spence, it’s fine,” she soothed. “I have months. We got me through a whole grade _so_ fast, we can do it again.”

“Not if you fail both these papers—” he tried to say, but she was already gone, leaving him sitting there with his textbooks feeling the upcoming finals looming over him like a monolith. He knew how this ended: he’d take the exams, not only pass but _stun_ the examiners, and then he’d graduate and be off to college by fall. Back in the States. If Emily passed, with her.

If she didn’t, alone.

He _couldn’t_ be alone. With a weary heart and well aware of what he was doing and the monumental disservice he was doing her by doing it, he took a fresh pad of paper out of his desk, picked up his pen, and took a deep breath.

 _A Theory on Radicalisation of At-Risk Youths,_ he wrote carefully along the top, mimicking her handwriting expertly. _By Emily Prentiss._

Just this once.

 

It was just for tonight, she promised him over and over, meaning it every time—but there was always one more invitation, one more unmissable night. One more midnight moon with Matthew driving and Fiona half out the window, laughing at the wind in her hair. One more watching the stars dash by through the sunroof of Matthew’s car, curled in the backseat in John’s arms and feeling safe and loved and wanted and wild and _alive._

She couldn’t explain it to Spencer. He didn’t get how important it was—she _fit_ with them like she’d never fit before, like she was one of those jigsaw puzzles made with the curved edges when everyone else in her life was a children’s five-hundred-piece standard. She just couldn’t fit, no matter how much easier it would make it. She listened to Spencer and Elizabeth talk politics at the dinner table and loathed every inch of it for the pretence it was and she went to church every Sunday and realised that there was nothing here for her. Matthew stood beside her in the pews, his parents having agreed to take her with them since they were avid members of the same church Elizabeth attended, and she knew he was questioning every gospel ‘truth’ the same as she was.

And these nights might have been small in Spencer’s eyes, but they weren’t to her. They couldn’t be. She risked her life deliberately, with John risking his beside her because if they died while they were living at least there was a sign that they’d bothered to try. And there was no moment that she was more aware of living than when she’d climbed the outside of a great building with John, hanging from the edge and screaming with equal parts fear and exhilaration as the distance made a mockery of her childhood tree. With space around her and the stars within reach, she didn’t need anyone to hold her here—the only thing between her and the ground was her own will.

This was _living._

But she always went home. Sometimes, it went flawlessly, sneaking in through the window without being noted. Sometimes, it took some fast-talking to get the security staff to let her past without telling her mother, usually on the nights when she was too drunk to climb to her window. And, after John introduced her to infinity in the form of a small tablet that dissolved into bitter nothing on the back of her tongue, some days she was just too slow to sneak her way in, too distracted by the feel of the sandstone floors under her bare feet or the way the walls felt to the palms of her hands.

Spencer was the saving of her, often. One day he found her sitting by the end of their hall studying the tassels of the ugliest rug she’d ever seen, looking down at her without a word as he noted her condition and added that to the disapproval she knew he aimed her way often. Sometimes that bothered her, how he seemed to have jumped from her happy-go-lucky childhood friend right to her mother’s little helper with no in-between of them being wild together. Before they could speak, she heard her mother approaching—but in that same heartbeat of time, he was gone and she could hear his voice floating down towards her from where he’d waylaid her mother, asking if Elizabeth could please explain some current element of diplomatic upheaval in Eastern Europe to him. The footsteps receded, and she beamed and made a mental note to tell him how much she loved him.

Of course, by the time she sobered up, she’d forgotten it had ever happened, and he never mentioned it. And she never knew that the reason the staff never told Elizabeth what she was up to was that Spencer was taking advantage of every inch of goodwill he’d built with them to ask them not to. She knew about the papers he was forging for her, but never really appreciated how opposite his nature it was to write them for her, with every one of them adding to the guilt he was wearing like a second skin.

She never really understood that the reason he tried to be so grown up was that he was covering for all the ways she wasn’t.

 

On this night, they were having very different experiences.

Emily had lit a fire for the very first time. It wasn’t anywhere where anyone would be endangered by it, nor would it destroy anything with its hungry fingers, but it was astounding to her anyway. To think that her hands had created something so fierce and real, snapping at the wood they fed it as though it would never be sated. John showed her how to make it snarl and spit, gas for the vivid flames until they were both in danger of being scorched—she loved that. Loved the heat and the small burn on her hand and the soot on his clothes. The smell of woodsmoke in his hair and the way he kissed just like the fire did, like he wanted to see her burn.

Spencer had waited for Emily to come home to attend Carnevale with him, as she’d promised. But the night was here and she wasn’t—he dressed and left, shaking his head when one of the security staff asked if he’d like company. He would celebrate the festivities alone.

Emily had no interest in the distant sound of fireworks and celebrations. There was no fun to be found in the vivid nightlife of the winter festival. Instead, there was laughing as Matthew lit a sparkler and spun with it, spirals of sparks lighting up the night. There were John’s hands on her hips, teasing her into a dance that set their feet tripping dangerously close to the promising flames. She was miles from Rome and miles from home and happier this way.

Spencer wasn’t as alone as expected. He’d wandered with interest until finding himself in Piazza Navona surrounded by families in costumes and masks, watching the street performers and theatre shows. A magician near him was using fire to mask his illusionary sleight of hand, Spencer inching closer and watching with fascination as the man coaxed the fire into a bow and then in a bird in short succession, children clapping him on. Someone caught Spencer’s arm and he turned with surprise, finding two tumblers bounding past. One paused, soft blue eyes behind her raven mask making him think of Emily, just for a moment. “Castagnole for the sweet boy,” she told him in Italian, her voice older than he’d expected having seen how limberly she danced. When he thanked her and took the sweet roll she was offering, she laughed, asking him where his maschere was, to hide his pretty face. Blushing, he didn’t answer, and she leapt away back into the crowd.

Emily was sure that this was the only way to live, open and bared to the world. Fire at her feet and her friends beside her, until John took her hand and led her from the fire’s glow; that was the night he introduced her to a new kind of vulnerability. She wasn’t sure it changed anything about her, but he seemed satisfied enough, and she guessed it would make more sense tomorrow when she’d had time to think it over, even as she sat alone afterwards and ached in more ways than one, something dark crawling deep inside her and making her very self feel shaken.

Spencer found his way to a shop selling the Carnevale masks and read each and every description carefully before finding two that were perfect, despite the hefty price tags. He wore one and carried the other, finding his way back to the dancers. Perhaps she recognised his hair or maybe she knew his walk, but his tumbler found him in the crowd and, bolstered by the mask he was using to give him the courage to be _more_ , Spencer asked if she’d teach him to dance like she did.

And their night passed them by, both of them learning very different things through the living of it.

 

They crept back through Carnevale in the midnight revelries. Fireworks lit their way, the streets lined by lights and still full despite the hour. They fit in among the revellers, a little drunk, still stoned, Emily drifting away from her friends in favour of watching jugglers tease the drunks on one street corner. She thought she could see a familiar profile among the dancers at Piazza Navona but, when she turned to call out to her friends, they'd been swallowed by the crowd. Startled and a little lost, the press of unfamiliar faces threatening to swallow her too, she stood stock still, torn between running for the person she thought she recognised and the safety of where her friends had been.

She chose her friends, turning and pushing through the crowd but finding no one there. When she turned, she still couldn’t see them—just a wave of masks and vivid clothing. The traditional masks made of white faces and sharp lines frightened her, the plague doctors surrounding her looming. She tried to run from those and almost tripped, the alcohol and the drugs and her fear combining to terrify her, crying out as a sharp-beaked bird touched her arm. She whirled, and again, trying to flee and instead almost crashing through a fox-faced woman who was too drunk to help her.

By instinct, she went for safety—towards the shape she’d seen in the crowd, the one she’d recognise no matter how drunk she was, no matter how dark the world. But all she found were strangers dancing, pressing herself back against a wall and closing her eyes.

Someone took her hand, leading her from there. She was too scared to look, so she just let herself be pulled until the raucous music died down and the cold chill of stone walls around them loomed. She opened her eyes: they were inside a church, just in the doorway. The few people inside paid them no heed, and it was quiet and ethereal. She breathed, then looked to her savour and blinked to find Spencer’s eyes watching her from Fiver’s face.

“You found a hare mask,” she said redundantly, captured by the patterns hand-stitched into the velvety-brown of the mask he wore. She reached up and traced the curl of his muzzle, the stitches for whiskers, seeing his smile under the half-mask grow. “Hi, Fiver.”

“Are you okay?” he asked her, tilting his head like the rabbit he was. “You looked freaked out.”

“I’m okay,” she promised him. Now she was. Now she was safe. “Want to go home?”

“Absolutely,” he said, but paused before leading her from there. From the bag at his hip he drew something carefully out, something wrapped lovingly in tissue paper to keep it safe. “I got you something.”

She unwrapped it with hands that drifted, finding a mask within that sung of home when she touched her fingers to it. Real feathers brushed her fingers, the beak cold and sharp, the eyes cut to be a savage shape. “A raven,” she whispered, staring at the spiky frame of the mask created by the feathers.

“A blackbird,” he told her, beaming. “Try it on.”

Despite her distaste for masks, this one, when she tried it on, felt beautiful and kind. And, masked as their childhood fantasies and hand in hand just like they’d used to be, he led her from that church and out into the night, walking her home without his grip faltering once.

It felt like moving backwards but, to Emily at least, in the most beautiful way.

 

They didn’t make it all the way home, but that was okay. They made it most of the way. On the expansive lawns of the villa, they lay together to watch the stars. Masks still on and Spencer reciting dreamily all the things he’d done, seen, tasted, experienced that night. Emily listened, sobering up now and a little sorry she’d missed it.

“I was supposed to go with you,” she remembered suddenly with a cold rush of sobriety. “Oh gosh, Spence, I’m sorry. I completely forgot…”

“It’s okay,” he told her, but it wasn’t—not to her. She took off her blackbird mask and held it above her to watch the stars through the eyeholes, realising that she’d forgotten him completely while he’d been finding her the perfect mask.

“It’s not okay,” she said, lowering the mask and holding it close. “I forgot you and you were still there when I needed you. I keep taking you for granted, and I need to stop. I’m going to do better, I promise.”

He was quiet for a bit. She looked at him, suddenly realising with a jolt that he wasn’t wearing his glasses—contacts? Since when? When had this happened?

“It was easier when we were kids,” he said suddenly, touching his fingers to his hare-nose like he’d forgotten the mask and was instead reaching for his glasses to readjust them. “Could you imagine how excited we’d have been to be here tonight if we were seven? You’d be making up stories about Gnods and dragons…”

“And you’d be keeping a checklist of every different type of mask you saw, ready to investigate the designs and history of each and every one,” she said with a laugh. “I’m surprised you weren’t doing that tonight. It’s not like you to miss an opportunity to learn.”

“Oh, I was learning,” he told her with a surety in his voice that stalled her. He sounded so calm, so confident, that she wondered what had happened to her friend in the time she’d been distracted. Maybe he’d been doing some growing too. “I’m starting to manage my shyness… your mom’s been helping me. Once I had my mask on, it was easy—I could talk freely because no one could see how young and inexperienced I am, so I was free to ask them whatever I wished. I learned how to dance and to juggle and a man showed me a rope trick with the end of my shoelace and I tried possibly every kind of sweet…” He trailed off, smiling happily up at the sky as Emily watched him and wondered if maybe his night had really, in many ways, been more actual than hers.

“I had sex with John,” she said.

Spencer sat up quickly, pulling his mask off and staring at her with his hazel eyes sharp on his discerning face. She cringed away from that stare, feeling a kind of shameful misery creeping in.

“Don’t do that,” he said, dropping his mask on the ground and shuffling forward to pull her into a hug that smelled of the paraffin the fire performers used overlaying his own familiar scent. “Don’t pull away from me. I’m not angry or ashamed, I was just surprised. You surprised me.”

She huddled into his hug, his arms warm and encompassing like they’d never been when they were kids. “I feel like a slut,” she admitted, feeling sick even as she voiced it. “I don’t think I should have done it. I don’t think I wanted it to be like that, so… trivial….”

“There’s nothing wrong with sex, Em,” he said after a moment, like he was trying to find the words to make her feel better. “Not the _act_ anyway, it’s not… I don’t know. I don’t know how to approach this. You’re not a—that’s a horrible word, and you’re not that. I guess it’s not _good_ because you regret it, but that’s different to it being inherently shameful. Just because you got drunk and stoned—” She winced again, hating that he knew she on drugs: “—and did something you regret, it doesn’t change your value to me or anyone who matters. You’re still my Blackbird. And I’m sorry you feel bad about it. I wish it could have been happy for you.”

She didn’t know what to say, and so didn’t say anything, just let him hold her as the night ticked on, but not quite fast enough to let the phantom hands on her fade.

“I think I can help,” he said suddenly, pulling her up. “Come on.”

She followed, curiously, back into the house with Spencer waving at the guards as they passed, upstairs and into his room. She took a seat on his bed and watched him curiously as he dug through his closet and emerged with a box, which he gave to her and told her to open. She did.

It was her CD player.

“Mom didn’t donate it,” she breathed, reaching in and finding her albums there too, each and every one of them. “You had it?”

“She asked me after she took it from you,” he told her, guilt on his face. “Said she didn’t feel right giving it away since it had been a partial gift from me, so I said I’d hide it until she said it was okay to give it back. But I guess she forgot, so here it is.”

“Spencer…” It meant so much. Once again, she didn’t know what to say—but suddenly she knew what to do. “Where’s the outlet in here?”

“What? Why?”

She found one, plugging it in and digging through her punk rock albums before she found one much more suited to this. “You said you learned to dance,” she said, standing and kicking her shoes off, reaching for his hand. “Well, it’s Carnevale—let’s _dance_.”

He took her hand with a laugh, and they danced together on this fading night, feeling as though the ghosts of the children they’d been were dancing right there beside them, and really always would be.


	22. The Trouble With Cheating

Reality crashed in as Emily stared down at the practise exam sheet she’d completed and handed over to Spencer to mark. He’d given it back.

“Did I get anything _right_?” she asked, horrified. He didn’t answer, just swallowed and looked to the paper too. “Well. Okay. How long do we have? I passed the topics, right? Otherwise, they wouldn’t let me be taking it, so I just need to revise like mad and—”

“You passed the topic because I was doing your work for you,” Spencer said quietly, fiddling with the pen in his hand. Outside, it was a gorgeous spring day in Rome but, in here, in Emily’s room with the open curtains and windows barely taking the chill of this moment from her bones, she was doing anything but appreciating it. “I shouldn’t have done that… now you don’t know any of the content…”

“But I can learn it,” she said with absolute desperation. “Spencer? I can learn it, right?” She was driven by the fear of what this meant—if Spencer passed and she didn’t, he’d leave. She’d have John and Matthew and Fiona, but the bed twenty-two feet from hers would be empty.

He looked at the paper again. They had a month.

“Sure,” he said firmly. “We just need to focus.”

He was driven by that exact same fear.

And Emily was sure that they could do this.

 

“I need to study,” she told John again, shaking his hand off of her and diving back into the book she’d been revising since breakfast the day before. “I can’t hang out.”

“Come on,” he pressed. “You know you’re going to ace it. You’re smart, right? And when you do, we’ve only got a bit of time left together. I’m going to miss you when you vanish off to college, you know that. I’m kind of used to being John and Emily…”

“I know.” She turned the page, none of the words making sense to her blurry vision. The stress of what was coming up was pressing down on her shoulders, John’s visible misery hurting her atop it. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” he muttered, leaning back against the tree they were under. “I don’t want you to go… why do you have to go to college _now?_ Another year won’t hurt and you can learn all this properly, not cramming it in… and we get more time together.”

“A year is too late. I have to go now.” She didn’t say why, sensing that he wouldn’t really understand. “You’re just pissed because you like the easy sex.”

But the joke didn’t land, him giving her a strange, heavy kind of look. “That’s not it, Em, you know that. I love you, right?”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. Why would he dump that on her now, when she was preparing to _leave?_ What possible purpose could it serve except to hurt them both with what was ending—this was why they’d never officially became a couple, she knew she was leaving him. Rome was temporary!

“Don’t you love me back?” he pressed, eyes intent on hers.

Did she?

“John…”

“No, don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t try to ease me into it, being all political like your fucking mother—you look like her when you get all manipulative, you know that? I can see you’re going to lie to me. Whatever… I just thought you should know that I love you and I want you to stay with me, but I guess you’d rather fuck off to college with that little geek.”

Annoyance sparked. “Don’t call him that.” John didn’t answer, just shot her a wry look, so she stood. “Don’t get snarky with me, John. You knew this wasn’t a thing that was forever, we never wanted it to be forever. You can’t change the rules on me now and expect me to be on board. This is my future—not _you_.”

His face told a story, and it wasn’t a good one. Emily looked at it as he snapped out a reply, and thought of every dire warning Spencer had issued about how this would end. “Yeah? Well, was it your future three weeks again when you were happy getting fucked up with us instead of studying? You’d think if it was so important, you’d have been off preparing then instead of out with me, busy being such a fucking amazing girl that I had no choice but to fall head over heels for you. Or, you know, when you had sex with me despite apparently not being that into me. Thanks for that, by the way. It’ll be nice to have the memories when you fly away to your _future_ and leave me rotting here.” John stood, dropping his cigarette and grinding it below his shoe before striding away and leaving her sitting by his car. “I don’t doubt you’re gonna smash it Emily—but I’m going to miss you a lot when you do.”

She didn’t wait for him to come back. Feeling thoroughly scolded, she picked up her books and slunk home alone, finding Spencer curled up in their sitting room surrounded by his own studies.

“Want to revise?” he asked her when he saw her walk in.

“Yeah,” she said, not telling him anything that had just happened.

 

Emily was panicking.

“Quantitative versus qualitative,” Spencer quizzed her patiently as they sat in the library at school, ignoring her wide-eyed stare. “And the salient aspects of both, go.”

She stared.

“Come on, Em,” he goaded. “This is simple. Quantitative, _quantity._ What form of research—”

“Numerical,” she breathed out, the panic fading. “It’s numerical data. I can do this, right?”

He hesitated, but no one had ever gotten anywhere by being a pessimist. Sliding his hand over the red marks he was making on yet another practise exam, this one an essay format, he beamed. “Yup,” he said. “They wouldn’t be letting you take it if they didn’t think you could.”

“That’s true,” she agreed, some of the panic fading.

And Spencer kept up his bright smile despite knowing one thing: they were only letting her take this exam because he’d done the work for her throughout the school term. They now only had two weeks until the exam period.

He didn’t think she was going to make it.

 

Emily was feeling confident. Spencer seemed to think she had a chance, and he was very rarely wrong. Even as Matthew quizzed her quietly during their English Lit class, she was confident.

“You really think you’re going to do this?” he whispered, pausing to watch their teacher stalk around the other side of the classroom. “I mean, college. Wow. You’re not even fifteen…”

“I told you,” she said firmly. “Ever since we were kids, I’ve known one thing—if Spencer can do it, so can I. I just need to work hard.”

Matthew looked at her with the same look Spencer usually gave her, except slightly less aggravating. It was soft and worried all at once, and she winced. It hurt more when it was Matthew. There was less expectation of his meddling, so when he did, it _mattered._ “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But… you did kind of… well, all our grades suffered this year. I don’t know how you kept yours up. My parents are threatening to send me to summer school.”

“Luck,” she lied, thinking of Spencer. A threat of disquiet worked its way in, but she shoved it aside. So she’d messed up—she knew that now. She could push past it, she _could._

She was sure.

 

The week of their exams arrived. Spencer wasn’t worried, no more than he usually was when facing assessment. He simply dressed as usual, ate breakfast calmly, and watched Emily crumble in the face of it. He was calm: he knew what he had to do today.

Despite Emily being sure that she could pass, deep down she was terrified. She couldn’t eat her breakfast, hardly able to stomach even the driest of toast, walking after Spencer into the schoolyard feeling like the end was nigh. Everyone knew that she was taking these exams. She’d boasted enough about being sure that she’d graduate at the same time Spencer did, having never before been assailed by these doubts. That walk across the yard felt like a walk of shame, and she was sure every eye was on her and her alone as she followed Spencer to the gymnasium where the seniors were lining up to get their pockets checked. All so much taller and older and smarter than she was, and she stuck to Spencer and reassured herself that at least she was…

She looked at Spencer and blinked. The same _size_ as Spencer? When had that happened? Until now, she’d been taller, hadn’t she?

Uh oh, she thought, doom pressing down like the realisation that Spencer was getting taller was just confirmation that she was about to be left behind. Her breath came fast, her feet slowing, and she began to panic.

But Spencer took her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, giving her one of his best smiles. “We’re going to be okay.”

“If I don’t pass, we’re getting _separated_ ,” she wheezed, because this was it. There was no way Spencer was going to fail—and there was utterly no point in taking this back and saying ‘wait no, I want to stay in high school’ once he’d passed. “I’ll be left behind and you’re—”

“It’s going to be okay,” he said again, taking her hand and holding it tight as they waited for their names to be called by the invigilator.

And he sounded so sure that she had no choice but to believe him.

 

In August, their results came back. Emily knew immediately when they were called into Elizabeth’s office that the results were in, walking along the hall with a sinking sense of doom. She hadn’t done well. She knew she hadn’t, but Spencer refused to let her talk about it or plan for their imminent end. The entire summer holidays she’d spent in a haze of misery, waiting for the inevitable. Not even her friends could pull her out of her funk, despite all of them trying their best.

“Well, here you both are,” Elizabeth said as soon as they were seated. Two large envelopes sat, unopened, in front of her. “Shall I open them, or would you both prefer to?”

“Me, please,” Emily rasped out, panic drying her mouth. She couldn’t look at Spencer. She _couldn’t._

He didn’t say anything, just swallowed loud enough that they all heard him.

The envelopes were duly passed to them. Emily opened hers instantly and with ferocity, taking out all her anger at the disappointment she knew was within on the yellow paper. Spencer just looked at his, knowing exactly what was inside and not wanting to take the final step of confirming it. He just waited, feeling numb and sick with his gut knotting tight until Emily confirmed the choice he’d made all those months ago.

“I failed,” she said, lowering the results and blinking rapidly. Elizabeth exhaled, the only sign of expression on her face the flare of her nostrils and a slight purse of her lips. “I’m not graduating…”

“At what level will you be remaining?” Elizabeth asked her, compounding Emily’s shame.

“Eleven,” she muttered, staring so intently at the F marks on the paper that she saw the exact moment they began to tear and blur with her vision, the ink running on one. “They think maybe I need to go back and work on my foundational understanding…”

“I see.” Elizabeth inhaled, finally, looking at Spencer with clear disappointment in her eyes. Emily wilted. “And you, Spencer?”

The sound of his envelope tearing broke Emily’s heart. She’d ruined it. Their promise to stay together, everything they’d planned, their friendship… it was over. Why had she even bothered to work so hard to get ahead in school—it was all _pointless_ now that he was leaving—

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so quietly they could barely hear him. Emily closed her eyes, furious that she had to sit here and listen to how he’d excelled— “I… I guess I panicked.”

She opened them, looking to him and then launching out of her chair to grab his results paper. It stared back at her: F, F, F, F, F…

“You _failed_ ,” she gasped, her stomach unknotting so fast that she almost threw up. “Spence!”

“What?” Elizabeth stood too, holding her hand out for the results and staring at them. “How did this happen? Spencer?”

He began to cry softly and Emily’s heart sank. She knew what he’d done.

She knew.

“I hate you,” she whispered, louder when he looked up at her. “You knew I was going to fail—I _hate_ you!”

And she ran from the room and just kept running, slamming out of the front doors and fleeing from that horrible place, burning from the inside out with the betrayal: he’d said he believed in her but, in the end, he hadn’t. He’d known all along that she couldn’t do it, and he’d _lied._

He’d flunked on purpose.


	23. Fiver Goes Away

For once, it was not Emily who was facing imminent punishment. Spencer had so rarely been in trouble throughout his life that he found the atmosphere of wrongness around him to be almost untenable. It was suffocating and had been since the day he’d made the very conscious choice to deliberately flunk his classes in order to remain with his friend.

Elizabeth was relentless as soon as Emily had fled from the room, disallowing him from following her and giving him a scathing lecture on just how many things he’d done wrong and how many people he’d hurt with his actions. The list included not only himself and Emily, but also Elizabeth herself and his mom, and, as soon as she pointed that out, the tears came in earnest.

That didn’t slow her down. She’d had Emily’s entire life to become used to punishing in the face of tears, and, despite how woeful he looked right then, he needed to know just how terrible the thing he’d done was. And when she was done detailing exactly how he’d failed the people he’d failed, she took a deep breath and paused to allow him to attempt to compose himself, taking the chance to offer him a tissue to replace the ruined one he was clutching in his hand.

“Wipe your face and blow your nose,” she told him coldly, ignoring his soft sniffling. “I’ll call for some water. Drink, and then we’ll discuss your punishment.”

“My… punishment?” he whispered, eyes going so startlingly huge that she had to think back over whether she’d ever had to actually punish him. There had been lectures aplenty, although very few aimed directly at him since he was usually—almost always—the co-pilot to Emily’s flights of fancy, and none of the punishments had ever before been aimed at him alone.

But, alas, it had to be done.

“Your punishment,” she said firmly, using the time it took a maid to bring the water up to go over the details in her mind. Neither of the children was going to like it, but they’d proved one thing: they couldn’t remain together.

Not anymore.

 

She couldn’t bear to look at John right now and Fiona was away with her father, so Emily went to the only place she knew she could find comfort.

“What are you doing here?” Matthew asked, opening his window to let her climb in. “Jeez, you know what my parents think of you—are you crying?”

“Oh, _Matthew,”_ she sobbed, crumpling into his arms and letting him hug her tight. “I’m such a fucking _idiot.”_

He was quiet for a moment, before, “Did your results come in?”

She nodded against his chest, feeling the shame bubble up and burn savagely at everything she’d thought she’d understood about herself. And everyone would know—everyone would look at her at school and know she’d tried to fly and failed, bringing Spencer down with her. Some Blackbird… she was more Icarus than she was any kind of capable flyer.

“It’s shit, I know, but no one is going to tease you about it,” Matthew was saying, patting her on the back as he spoke. “I mean, come on, Em. The fact they let you take it at _all_ is huge! You’re fourteen and they were willing to let you attempt to graduate—that’s a crazy good achievement!”

“Because Spencer was doing all my assignments for me,” she admitted finally, letting go of him and using her sleeve to wipe her eyes, leaving makeup all over them. She probably looked a fright too, just adding to the misery. “That’s why they let me take the exams. Spencer was handing in all my work for me, all semester, while I hung out with you guys…”

“Oh,” said Matthew, wincing. “Ouch…”

“And he _flunked_ ,” she snarled, anger trying to burn away the shame now. “On purpose! He knew I couldn’t do it, just like _everyone_ knew I couldn’t, and he _flunked_. He has to pretend to be an idiot just to stay at my level… I’m such a fucking _dumbass.”_ She wanted to throw something, hit something, _scream_. All this time, thinking she was something special—and she was _nothing._

It was not the kindest of times to have the realisations Emily was having, nor was she very equipped to deal with them. But here they were to stay, the biggest of which being this: that person you thought you could trust? You couldn’t. You couldn’t trust _anybody._

Everybody lies.

 

When she got home, the house was utterly silent. No one would meet her eyes as she slunk in, suddenly getting the surest sense that, while she’d been gone, something terrible had happened. News spread fast in this place among the staff, and she suspected that this news had spread faster than ever. Was it because she’d failed, or had how she’d dragged Spencer down too already become common knowledge? She hoped not. They’d always liked Spencer a lot more than her. If they thought she’d fucked him over, she was going to get cold dinner from now, that was for sure.

But the staff weren’t reacting at all to the school results. Emily wouldn’t know this until the next morning, as she slunk to bed without eating dinner and, thus, did not hear the announcement Elizabeth made to the gathered household: the household that was going to, from now on, be less.

 

In the morning, she was told. With Spencer sitting mutely at his seat staring at a breakfast he’d excuse himself without eating, this was what Emily learned would be the repercussions of Spencer’s fraudulence.

He would be retaking the exams, Elizabeth informed them in no uncertain terms. She’d already called the school and informed them of what had happened—Emily suspected, correctly although she’d never have confirmation, that money had exchanged hands in order to ensure it went in Elizabeth’s favour—and they were organising a resit. He would pass this time. This was also phrased as an absolute, Spencer sinking a little in his chair as the momentous weight of that pronouncement landed. A small part of him wondered if he’d failed a little _less_ spectacularly if things now would be different… but he knew they wouldn’t be. No one who knew him would have believed in his failure, no matter how carefully he’d orchestrated it.

He would obtain his diploma, although Elizabeth was cold as she told them both that he would have no honours or ceremony bestowed on him for the achievement, due to the utter disgrace of his gaining it. It would not be in front of a crowd of people as he stood alongside the peers who hadn’t made a mockery of their education at the final moment. Emily thought that that was incredibly cruel, her anger at that overcoming her anger at Spencer—but she didn’t speak up. By now, she knew there was no point.

And then the hammer fell.

“I’ve always believed in making the punishment fit the crime,” Elizabeth said in a voice that was quiet but no less acrimonious for the muted tone. Spencer wouldn’t meet Emily’s eyes when she tried to nudge his foot with hers. “Spencer has proved that, despite his intelligence, my doubts about his maturity were accurate. A mature person would not have done what he did. In handicapping his future in order to preserve a childhood friendship, he’s made two things abundantly clear. One: he has not left childhood and therefore is not suited to a college environment. I will not abide him to be static in the time between graduating high school and when he finally achieves that maturity, so this is where the second thing that’s become clear comes in. Two: you two may not remain together. It is time for childhood to end, for both of you, even if I must force it to do so.”

Emily froze, her world coming to a very abrupt and painful halt. Under her anger and her hurt and her fury at her friend, there had been one small silver lining—he’d have to stay with her.

And that was gone.

“Mom,” she whispered, but Elizabeth was firm.

“Emily, you will remain at school where you will _commit_ to your education. I will not hear excuses. I will also not be here to supervise over the coming three months. The embassy is arranging a diplomatic tour with me and several other consulates around Italy and the surrounds in an attempt to mend bridges burned by Brigate Rosse and suspicions of US involvement. We are also to travel to France, to mediate between Italy and those who are claiming political asylum. I do not need to stress how important this is going to be, and how I cannot be taking time off to babysit you through your education.” Elizabeth stared Emily down until Emily felt small and very shamed, wishing she could sink into her seat. “Spencer will be accompanying me.”

Emily’s head shot up, stunned. “He’ll… what?” she gasped. “Mom, but, what?”

“You heard me. Spencer will be accompanying me when the assignment begins in November. He will be fifteen in October and legally allowed to work and work he will, seeing the destruction that has been wrought on this country through the failure of country and citizens to find a diplomatic end to their differences. Exposure to what I have, perhaps mistakenly, sheltered you both from will cast a much different light upon how he views the world and his place in it. I hear the trials are particularly confronting.”

Emily didn’t know what to say, just looked helplessly to Spencer who, wisely, said nothing.

“But that’s dangerous,” she finally choked out.

“Yes, it is.” Elizabeth’s mouth thinned. “He won’t be in any more danger than I am at any point. I’ve already spoken to him about this and he has agreed to come along. This was his choice—he had other options.”

For the first time that morning, the thoroughly cowed Spencer spoke, his voice a rasp from a night spent awake and worrying. “What I did was selfish,” he said quietly. “This is a kind offer that will allow me to see directions in which I can put my abilities to use instead of squandering them. I’m sorry that I hurt you, Emily. I knew what I did was wrong as soon as I did it, but I didn’t know how to admit it… and this isn’t a punishment. This is a gift, and it’s far more than I deserve, all things considered. I’m very thankful.”

Emily knew he was reciting a planned speech, either his own or one that Elizabeth had hammered into him, and she also knew that it was useless. The deed was done, there was no going back. If Spencer had made his mind up to go, there would be no stopping him—and a small part of her didn’t really want to, too embarrassed by what he’d done for her to feel anything but uncomfortable around him right now.

“So you’re both leaving me behind to rot,” she said finally, that sinking home. “I just stay here? Alone?”

“I’m leaving you here to excel,” Elizabeth correctly, a dark hint of warning in her voice. “And I really don’t think you’ll like the results if you don’t.”

Emily let that sink in. The message, to her, was clear: if she failed again, she’d regret ever being born a Prentiss.

She wasn’t entirely sure that she didn’t regret that anyway.

 

There was one night following where Emily came out of her room and found Spencer standing in the hall outside her door, his hand partially raised as though he’d been considering knocking. It was two weeks following the decisive end of their current lives. Spencer had resat the exams. Elizabeth was organising her trip. No one was speaking.

“What?” Emily asked him rudely, crossing her arms and making sure he knew how much she didn’t want to change that. There was no point. For one, she was too hurt still to consider it; two, she didn’t need him and, soon, she wouldn’t have him anyway. Why mend bridges when those bridges were about to be demolished anyway?

And Spencer, who missed her dearly and wished he’d never made the choice he had because he was suffering far more than the mistake had really warranted, recognised how not wanted he currently was and simply said, “Nothing,” before walking away.

Neither of them could see a way to fix this.

 

October came and they turned fifteen, separately. Spencer attended Emily’s birthday dinner, as was required, and he bought her a gift that she didn’t open; instead, putting it—still wrapped—in the bottom of her closet to drown in dust and resentment. He did not go out with her after, as she spent the rest of the evening with the friends who had never lied to her or made such a complete mockery of her before. School, she was finding, was just as horrible as she’d expected it to be. Everyone knew, despite the fact that Spencer had indeed graduated with flying colours, that he’d originally failed… and why. She was a laughingstock. But she had her friends, her _real_ friends, so what did it matter?

Emily did not attend Spencer’s fifteenth birthday dinner. He ate alone with Elizabeth and declined to call his mother to hear her well wishes. After that, he went to bed early and barely slept at all.

Elizabeth, who noted that he hadn’t bounced back from being harshly scolded like Emily had always bounced back, did much the same as him, lying awake that night and wondering if she’d miscalculated in her treatment of him: after all, if there was one thing that had always been apparent, it was that Spencer was nothing like Emily. It stood to reason that he’d handle being in trouble vastly differently from her as well.

But she was sure he’d bounce back soon.

 

Two weeks later, it was time. Spencer packed his bags carefully, leaving many things behind.

One was his snow-globe, the one Chambers had given him so long ago. He was determined to conquer his fear of the dark, by force if he had to.

Two was Balthy. He held her for a long time, staring down at her soft ears and softer eyes before carefully placing her on the bed to remain behind. Adults didn’t take soft toys with them on diplomatic missions.

Three were the tattered fiction novels he’d carted all the way from Vegas. He packed books, of course—he wouldn’t be him without them—but he carefully made sure to leave behind anything that spoke of whimsy or fantasy. No _Lord of the Rings_ , no Poe, no _Lonely Planet_ , no fifteenth-century sonnets. If it was something he’d loved as a child, he ruthlessly left it to gather dust—despite how long he lingered over his battered copy of _Watership Down,_ his thumb pressed ready to open it to the page where there was a photo of him and Emily on their first day of school, so many years ago. But that too was put down, left beside Balthy on the bed as a reminder that he had no choice. Everything he took with him was non-fiction: textbooks on economics and politics and the history of Italy.

The final thing was this: being a child. It was with the certainty that when he returned he’d be an adult with little care for things like missing his friend or wishing things could be how they used to be which was what carried him out of that door, suitcase in hand and without looking back. It was time for him to leave Fiver behind, for good.

And for Emily, the house became far emptier than it had ever been before, this villa that now just contained a family of one. Just her.

That was just how she liked it, she told herself, and didn’t say goodbye.

 

And this was Emily in the after.

At school, she worked hard. She’d learned her lesson there and refused to feel that stupid again. In some ways, this was an important lesson for her—with Spencer gone and no longer making her feel dull next to his incandescence, she found that she could excel solely on her own. Over the months of being alone, she caught back up to where she had been before falling and slowly began to overtake herself. Her teachers told her that she was doing excellently and that she should write to her mother and tell her—surely Elizabeth would be as proud of her as they were. But she didn’t write. What would they care?

Outside of school, she was drowning, as lost as the forgotten gift in the bottom of her closet. She was lonely, crushingly so, and missed the people around her more than she would ever admit. Every night, no matter what she promised her friends they would do, she sprinted home and sat transfixed in front of the news, heart hammering with every report of terroristic activity around Italy. A bomb went off on a train and she had to fight not to throw up with fear, John sitting beside her with his hand on her arm and his thumb working soft circles into her skin. They all knew what she was scared of, Fiona in particular—she knew the fear of her family being a target.

“They’d tell you before it got on the news,” Fiona reassured her. “My dad would know at least.”

“I don’t care,” Emily lied. “I’m not even worried about them. Seriously, if I cared I’d return Mom’s phone calls sometime. If _he_ cared, he’d actually call to begin with… nope. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

They did her the favour of letting her believe that.

She began to wonder if she was a ghost floating around these empty halls, past her mom’s silent office and Spencer’s empty bedroom. She only went in there once, pausing in the doorway and looking to where Balthy and a book sat abandoned on his bed. It was a perverse kind of lure drawing her in, her hands lifting the book with such care, in case she shook away the memory of his hands on it. _Watership Down_ , and she tossed it down with disgust at the reminder.

It bounced off Balthy and hit the floor, the pages spilling open. Horrified at her carelessness, she dived for it… pausing when she saw what had slid free.

The photo of her and Spencer, arms around each other and grinning for the camera—all of eight years old. Seven years prior. Seven years of friendship, where he’d stood by her no matter what she’d messed up… she remembered, very suddenly, his broken leg and all the times he’d gotten in trouble beside her just so she didn’t have to be in trouble alone.

“Oh,” she said, more to herself than the wordless Balthy. “Oh man. I really fucked up, didn’t I, Balth? He didn’t do it to hurt me…”

It seemed a bit late for that kind of revelation though.

But Spencer was better than she was—he didn’t hold grudges. She could _fix_ this, she was sure. Picking up Balthy and the book with the photo replaced back in it, she walked from that room with her head held high, refusing to let the echoing halls of this place beat her down.

She’d call him, she decided. This weekend, when her mom rang to ask about her week, she’d ask to speak to Spencer and find out what he thought of the work he was doing and if he could ever forgive her for being an uncaring bitch when all he’d done was try to make her happy. She’d ask him if he was coming home for Christmas and what he wanted her to get him. And they’d be just like they always had been, except better, because Emily looked back and suddenly saw clearly all the times he’d gone out of his way to help her—and she’d taken it for granted that he’d always be there.

Well, he wasn’t here now, so she’d been proven wrong about that. And that was all her fault.

Balthy on her bedside cupboard until Spencer came home for her would be a reminder of that—she needed to do better.

 

But she didn’t answer her mom’s call that weekend: she was far, far too frightened. Instead, the ringing of the phone did nothing but narrate what was thus far the absolute worst moment of her life, curled up on her bathroom floor with her eyes fixed on what she was sure was the end of everything.

That was where John found her three hours later, irritated because she’d been supposed to meet him for a movie and because the guards hadn’t wanted to let him in. “Your family is so fucked up,” he announced, walking in without knocking and without a care for the fact that she was sitting there with no pants on. “What the fuck are those guys even guarding? There’s no one here except you and the—why are you on the floor?”

And Emily told him: “I’m pregnant.”


	24. An Incendiary Week in Rome

France was beautiful in winter. Spencer brushed his hand against the window of the small cabin, looking down into the thick forests around them. Up here, the air was cold and thin, so high in the French Alps. Behind him, the cabin was quiet except for the sound of soft talking in the kitchen—Elizabeth and her father, likely discussing Emily—and the snoring of the dog by the fire.

Outside, the ground was white and lightly flecked with brown where the soft snow hadn’t quite fallen heavily yet, and there was a shape in red and black sitting there morosely by the vegetable patch. After a moment, Spencer stepped away from the window, slid on his coat, and went out to sit beside her.

“I didn’t think this would happen,” Emily told him bluntly, snow on her lashes and shoulders. “I… thank you. For what it’s worth, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I did what others should have.”

There wasn’t a single part of him that regretted what he’d done in that incendiary week in Rome.

 

This is that week.

Spencer returned home with Elizabeth three months after leaving Rome feeling very different from when he’d left. Oh, it hadn’t been immediately apparent that he’d changed—he felt, at first, very much like the boy who’d dutifully followed Elizabeth from this city those months before. But being in Rome for just a little bit of time began to show him how different he was. Where before he’d only seen beauty and otherness, a country and city foreign to him, now driving through Rome was like sliding on a well-loved jacket that he knew by rote and was completely comfortable in only to find that, with time, the leather had become cracked and there were tears in the seams. His recent life had been an eye-opening realisation that even the most beautiful places had their darker undersides, and he wondered where the beauty of it all had gone.

“Christmas soon,” he commented to Elizabeth, perhaps thoughtlessly, but the last three months had cemented a kind of ease between them that he’d never really had with any other adult: an adult ease, where he felt comfortable being around an equal, despite the power imbalance between them. She looked at him, the same uncanny, all-knowing gaze he’d been doing his best to learn from her—how she picked apart the people she spoke to, the people she had to speak glibly to in order to achieve some diplomatic end. _Knowing_ people from just a look, and he was envious of it.

“Did you remember to pack Emily’s gift?” she asked, zeroing right in on why he was so nervous. He hadn’t spoken to Emily since they’d left, and with Elizabeth’s anger with him faded completely in the face of how hard-working and diligent he’d proven to be, that was the one remaining overwhelming anxiety of his life. “She won’t think kindly of you if you’ve forgotten it.”

“She doesn’t think kindly of me anyway,” he muttered, earning a glare. Elizabeth didn’t appreciate muttering, but Spencer wasn’t quite as scared of her as he had been. She’d been adamant that he wasn’t a child anymore and had treated him accordingly; indeed, probably the biggest change in him was this was how accustomed he’d become to being given such agency over his own actions. He stood by his own decisions and knowledge now, even in the face of confrontation, and Elizabeth wondered if he knew himself well enough to notice the change—and whether it had been pulling him out from under Emily’s shadow that had allowed it.

But whether or not Emily would appreciate her gift would have to wait because, when they arrived at Villa Taverna, Emily wasn’t there.

Spencer went looking after several hours had passed and Emily still hadn’t come home. He walked first to Fiona’s, tapping politely on the door until her mother answered and let him in. Fiona stared when she saw him, an immediate kind of panic settling over her features that Spencer tensed to see. “Oh, Spencer, hello,” she rambled, before swallowing loudly. All behavioural tics that Elizabeth had taught him to look out for because a panicked person was a person who information could be gathered from. “Oh, wow, you look different.”

“Do I?” he asked, startled, looking down at himself. Same clothes as always: neat trousers and sweater with his heavy coat overtop and pocket-watch clipped on. He needed a scarf, but nothing else was amiss.

“Um, no glasses,” she said, gesturing to his face. He’d gotten the contacts before he’d left, but smiled tightly anyway. He was used to people not paying that much attention to him. “Anyway, you look good. Emily’s going to be mad you’ve gotten taller though.”

He hadn’t realised that either.

“Is Emily here?” he asked her, watching carefully as she swallowed again. So it was Emily she was worried about… Elizabeth had taught him that too, that, in a negotiation, the closer they got to the outcome the other party wanted least, the more notable the behavioural tics would become.

“No,” Fiona said, her voice tight, looking him up and down again before speaking slowly. “Hey, Spencer… if she was in trouble, what would you do for her?”

What a ridiculous question, he thought. The answer was obvious.

“The same as I always have. Help her.”

So Fiona told him where to go next.

 

John’s house wasn’t as nice as theirs or Fiona’s, which Spencer guessed had probably contributed to his resentment towards them. Oh, he knew John resented them. He’d known for years. It was in the way he shunned Spencer, who hadn’t been born into wealth but had lucked into it anyway, and in the way he spoke to Emily, working to detach her from everything her mother is and was and had. With distance between school and now, Spencer had spent a lot of nights going over the way John was and had slowly come to realise what had happened between him and Emily wasn’t as simple as them growing apart: there had been nothing accidental in John’s actions towards them, nor was it entirely malevolent. Cognitive dissonance—John was simply working to separate the thing he loved, Emily, from the parts of her that made him extremely uncomfortable about his own understandings of the world, her family and her life and wealth. It just so happened that Spencer had fallen in on the side of things about Emily John disliked.

Spencer would never really have confirmation of how accurate he was in this rudimentary summation of John Cooley at the age of fifteen. However, the simple answer to how accurate it was was this: very.

“I don’t know where she is,” John said with a kind of derision he’d never talked about her with before. Spencer eyed him carefully, seeing familiar hints to startling things in the boy in front of him. Dry skin on his bottom lip where he’d gnawed at it, the creases in his long sleeves, the restless twitch of his fingers. “Haven’t seen her. Maybe she’s fucking someone else, who knows. You know how much of a slut she is.”

Spencer eyed him some more, tamping down a spark of what would be very reckless anger. John was bigger than him, stronger, and currently high. “Please don’t call her that,” he said with quiet calm. “Fiona said you’d know where Emily is. I’d really prefer you simply tell me rather than me having to get Ambassador Prentiss involved. That could end unkindly for you, what, with what I’m sure you have on your person right now.”

“Are you threatening me?” John snapped, balling his fists and stepping closer.

“Yes,” replied Spencer. “I don’t care what happened between you and her, I just want—”

“ _You_ don’t care?” John snarled, taking another step closer. Spencer didn’t move: _don’t show fear,_ Elizabeth had warned him one day on a tour through the squalid prisons the bevy of political arrestees who hadn’t fled to France were being held. _If they know you’re afraid, they can control you. You need to control them._ “That’s fucking rich. I bet it’s yours, isn’t it? Come on, you can tell me—I know you two were sleeping together, she used to tell me how you’d sneak into each other’s rooms at night.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just looking for Emily.” That was bait, and he didn’t rise to it, even as he unpacked the information held within it.

“Why? So you can play happy families?”

Spencer stared him down, unpacking that further until he came to a very unpleasant and startling conclusion, one which answered nicely why Emily—who knew they were returning home today—might have fled from them. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said, making sure to let his disdain show. “One question. Since I’m assuming from your demeanour that Emily came to you when she found out she was pregnant, can I ask how you responded to that?”

John blinked, staring at him. Spencer had thrown him off course, expecting a fight and finding none. “I told her it wasn’t mine,” he answered finally, relaxing his guard at Spencer’s apparent passiveness. “Because it’s _not_ mine. She’s rich. She can deal with it herself. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Spencer nodded, the anger flaring fast into something he hadn’t felt in years. Dimly, he recognised it as the same feeling that had once goaded him into throwing a notebook into a mirror. He didn’t even have time to consider what came next, only the inevitability of it. “Ah,” he said, feeling a smile tighten across his face. “I see. So, you threw her out. How long ago was that?”

“Dunno.” John was frowning at him now. “Why?”

“No reason,” said Spencer, and then he did something that he was pretty sure, three months before, he absolutely wouldn’t have done—but in that time, he’d seen what happened to people who didn’t think they had anyone in their quarter. He’d seen the lost and forgotten.

He’d seen the hurt.

It was yet another thing he wouldn’t regret about this week.

 

“What the fuck,” said Matthew when he opened the door to find Spencer standing there with his sleeve to his nose. “Spencer?”

“Hi,” Spencer said thickly. “Where is she?”

Matthew looked at him, eyes skimming down Spencer’s bloodied front and his rapidly blackening eye. “Not here,” he said loudly, but opened the door wider to let Spencer sidle through, being careful not to drip blood on the floorboards. “Come on up to the bathroom, I’ll clean you up.”

Spencer followed him up the stairs, entirely unsurprised when they didn’t go to the bathroom but, instead, Matthew’s bedroom, where Emily was curled up on the bed looking woeful with swollen eyes and a red nose. She jolted up and stared at him, mouth slipping open with shock at the state of his face.

“I think Spencer knows,” Matthew said helpfully behind him as Emily and Spencer did nothing but stare at each other. “And I’m guessing he’s seen John.”

“Oh _Spencer,”_ Emily hissed, covering her mouth with muted horror. “Why’d he hit you?”

“Because I hit him first,” Spencer answered.

Emily blinked. “What? Why? _What?”_

And Spencer simply shrugged, stepping into the room and going to sit next to his friend, answering with the simple truth: “Because he deserved it. What do we do now?”

What they did, as it turned out, was sit there together, just the three of them, holding Emily together as she desperately fell apart and told him everything that had happened to her while he hadn’t been here. And he made yet another choice, one with vastly different consequences from the last one.

 

In her office, Elizabeth was reading through a letter Diana had written her the month before that had somehow missed being forwarded through, smiling at her friend’s enthusiastic prose. The villa was quiet. She wondered where Emily was, despite not being surprised that the answer was ‘not here’. It was likely her daughter hadn’t quite forgiven her for every transgression she’d ever faced in her life. But that was unlikely to change, so Elizabeth accepted it. Perhaps there was just no saving their relationship. It would take a miracle, and she doubted one was forthcoming.

There was a knock at her door, polite and rhythmic enough that she knew instantly that it was Spencer. When he entered, she stared.

“We’ve been home—” She checked the clock: “— _five_ hours. Five hours, Spencer. How on earth did you get into a brawl in five hours? And do you need medical assistance? For goodness sake, change your _sweater_ at least, you’re going to ruin the knit—”

“May I ask your permission to be rude?” he asked, hands behind his back and looking at her with a wide-eyed guile she knew was utter bullshit. He wore that look when he was wheedling for something, she knew; after all, she’d taught him how.       

“If it were anyone else…” she said darkly but gestured for him to sit anyway. “Go ahead. Impolite away.”

But he didn’t sit. He continued standing there, guileless look turning sharp and fierce. A strange expression on a face so young.

“You need to do better,” he said with a forced ferocity that stunned her, too speechless to respond. “I’m going to tell you something important, but you need to promise me that you’ll be better than what you have been when I tell you. If you don’t promise me that, I’m not only going to not tell you, but I’m going to solve this in the only way I know how. And that will involve numerous violations of the law on mine and Emily’s behalf as well as a considerable monetary expense. Can you promise me?”

“I’m not promising anything so broad,” she said shortly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Spencer. Speak plainly.”

“Okay.” He squared his shoulders, a shadow of the man he was—terrifyingly—quickly becoming settling on his features. “When I tell you this, you need to be Emily’s mom. Not a politician. Not a diplomat. Not a Catholic. Her _mom_. Because she doesn’t need punishing or fixing about this, she needs help and she needs support and she needs _you._ I can’t help her like you can, I can only offer a mechanical solution that might stop disaster but will also further the divide between you and her to an irreparable extent. Am I making sense?”

Sureness settled, heavy and real: the calamity she’d always know was coming was finally here. Emily had never been going to fail in a way that was neat. And, from years ago, Elizabeth suddenly remembered Diana warning her of this… and warning her of what would happen if she reacted authoritatively and without humanity. Hadn’t she learned with Spencer all those months ago, when she’d punished him as fiercely as she would Emily only to find that he wasn’t Emily, he didn’t need that level of force? She had nearly crushed him instead of improving him. This was a warning that she may do the same to her daughter now, if she wasn’t careful, spoken by the one person who understood both Emily and Elizabeth better than they understood themselves.

“Tell me.”

So, he did.

After, Elizabeth asked him to wait in his room for her to make a decision. She needed to think this over. She needed to understand her own feelings before she could walk out of here and face Emily’s. First, she examined the facts. Like this one: Emily was pregnant and there was no turning back that clock. Nor was her having the baby an option—Spencer had already informed her of that in no uncertain terms. Emily did not want the child, she could _not_ care for a child, and it would be the ruin of her life.

And this one: Emily had been so terrified of being disowned and thrown out that she’d fled to Matthew instead of facing her mother. So terrified of Elizabeth that she and Matthew had already tried—and Elizabeth hoped _failed_ —to find a solution that didn’t involve her. Solutions that, as Elizabeth knew, put Emily in an incredible amount of danger.

And yet another: when Emily had needed someone the most, every single person had turned their backs on her. Spencer had been ruthless with telling her this, detailing how the church had rejected her, how John had blamed her, how Elizabeth just hadn’t been there. But then, she’d never really been there, had she? How could she blame the daughter for not trusting in the mother, when the mother had never attempted to gain that trust to begin with?

She made her own choice and reached for her phone.

Time to be a Mom.

 

And here they were.

“Emily,” Elizabeth called, stepping out of the front door of her father’s cabin, car keys in hand. “It’s time.”

Emily looked at Spencer, at the snow in his hair and the careful smile he gave her. “You’re going to be okay,” he told her firmly. “The doctors here are fantastic—I did a ton of research before Elizabeth made your appointment.”

“Better than some back alley in Rome,” Emily said quietly, before giving in and throwing her arms around him, pulling him into a tight, desperate hug. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, surprised. “Your mom did all the work, really. All I did was tag along and chop wood for Grand-père.”

“For being you,” she said firmly, and then walked down to join her mother. “I’m ready.” She was careful not to look back at Spencer and her grandpa standing behind them, determined to look forward at what was coming for once instead of pretending the future wasn’t approaching. “Mom?”

“Yeah?” said Elizabeth.

Emily asked for something she’d never thought she could ask for before from her mother, but that maybe, just maybe, this time she might actually get. After all, she wasn’t out on the street, or at boarding school, so… maybe. “You won’t leave me, right? You’ll stay with me?”

And Elizabeth promised her: “There won’t be a moment I’m not with you.”

It was the start of something new for them both.


	25. Elizabeth Surprises Everyone

Whatever Emily had expected to come of her fuck-up, it absolutely wasn’t this. It wasn’t an unforgettable Christmas in the French Alps with her beloved grandpa, even if she spent it sore and unhappy and curled in a blanket on the couch. That didn’t matter, because she wasn’t _alone._ There was Grandpa teaching Spencer how to whittle on the rug in front of the fire and there was Mom right by her side like she’d promised, reading a _fiction_ novel. Relaxing. She was just present like she’d never really been before.

And that continued.

Before they left France, Emily’s grandpa pulled her aside, calling her into the kitchen where he sat at the table he’d made himself. “Come here,” he ordered her and, when she did, he pulled her down onto his lap, ignoring her squeak of protest. “Don’t wiggle. You’re too big, girlie. You’ve gotten too big for this, let me have this one last time. I never did get to cuddle you much when you were small.”

She stopped wiggling, falling quiet at the reminder that everything was different now.

“I did the same with you as I did with Lizzy,” her grandpa was still saying. “Blinked and missed you growing up… well, I been telling her not to let it happen, but look how that turned out. She’s still so busy looking forward that she forgets to notice her family changing.”

“You know, don’t you?” Emily realised out loud, her heart sinking. “You know why we came here… did Mom tell you?”

“Evidemment, obviously. Figured she weren’t just coming to say hello, she hasn’t done that since you were five. Always a reason. No, no, stop looking at me like that—I’m not mad.”

“I wish people didn’t know,” Emily breathed, trying to pull away so he didn’t see her threatening tears. “It’s _embarrassing_. I don’t want people…”

“Thinking less of you?” Grandpa let her stand, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Muffet. I could never think less of you, you’re my little granddaughter, ma puce. No one who loves you values you less because of a mistake.”

Emily looked at him, her tears fading a little. “That’s what Spencer told me,” she realised quietly. “Ages ago…”

“Well, you should listen to him. Smart kid, got a good head. You could use that, instead of pigs like that Jack.”

“John…” But Emily still smiled, something sweeter than what she’d known stealing into her emotions and making them kinder, easier. Not as… angry. “Grandpa?”

“Ouais?”

“I’m not a flea, you really need a better pet name.”

His laughter reassured her that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t as dire as expected.

 

More surprises were to follow. They didn’t fly back to Rome after France, with Elizabeth informing them both that all of them needed a holiday.

“What about your work?” Emily asked suspiciously, expecting that maybe this was a _working_ holiday Elizabeth was trying to spin as a treat. That had definitely happened before.

“Screw my work!” Elizabeth exploded, both Emily and Spencer staring, stunned at her. “Bother my work! I want to spend time with my family, is that such an ask? We’re going to _reconnect,_ all of us—and damn anyone who says otherwise!”

“Wow,” whispered Spencer as Elizabeth stalked away to speak to the people at the ticket desk. “That just happened…”

“Maybe they swapped her with a different Elizabeth at customs on the way out of Rome,” Emily suggested, just as flummoxed as Spencer. “What do you think reconnecting means?”

“Something terrible, no doubt,” he replied with a gloominess that was far more foreboding than what the ‘reconnection’ actually turned out to be.

 

As it turned out, where they were going was a secluded hotel on the edge of Lake Tahoe, ringed by ski resorts and gorgeous snow plains. But, even better than the ski resorts, they got their _own_ hotel room.

“But you said when we’re _sixteen_ we get our own rooms,” Emily quoted gleefully, tearing around the gorgeously furnished room as she tried to work out which of the two beds she wanted. “We’re only fifteen. You’re early.”

“Honestly, Emily, if you can retain a throwaway comment from god knows how many years ago for _this_ long, tell me again how you failed your classes?” Elizabeth responded wryly. “Spencer, hurry up and pick your bed before Emily picks for you. I have a surprise here for you.”

“I’m fine with whatever bed Emily doesn’t want,” Spencer said, always placid, shifting his suitcase from hand to hand as he waited for Emily’s exuberant exploration to end. “What’s the surprise?”

“If she tells you, it’s not a surprise.” Emily paused, turning to look at Elizabeth with her eyes narrowing in a very Elizabeth look. Spencer, wisely, decided not to point out the resemblance. “Wait, why did you put us in the same room? Is this the reconnecting? Are you trying to force us to spend time together?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth bluntly. “I don’t regret separating you both for the time following your exams. I _do_ regret the division that came between you both before that. When we return to Rome, I won’t pretend that things are going to be easy for you, Emily. You will have to return to school and you will have to face the fact that people have knowledge of what—”

“You’re going to make me go back to church,” Emily said, horror striking home. “Mom, you _can’t.”_

“I’m not going to. If you don’t want to return to church, that’s your choice. I won’t enforce participation in a community that worked to exclude it’s most vulnerable—but you will return to school. While Spencer won’t be at school alongside you anymore, my hope is that you can find what you both had previously, the friendship that bolstered you both through any difficulties you encountered.”

“You told me that growing up meant I had to leave behind childish friendships,” Spencer said to her, the atmosphere awkward in that moment. “That was part of what you scolded me for following the exam. Now you want us to be friends again?”

“And I stand by that,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Do you think mine and Diana’s friendship is the same as it was in college? It is not, because we are older and our friendship is older too. You and Emily cannot have the friendship you had as children, where the only important thing was remaining together—that kind of friendship is what leads to ludicrous displays such as the exam. But you can have a friendship based around something stronger, the acceptance and understanding that you both love and care for each other, no matter what. _That_ kind of friendship is what drove you to come to me for help, Spencer. If you were still clinging to childish notions of companionship, you would have both hidden this away instead of responding like adults and deciding on a sensible solution. That’s the friendship I want you to work hard to retain, despite your recent differences. Do you both understand?”

They both nodded, waiting until Elizabeth informed them to meet her in their private sitting room within the hour and left before looking at each other.

“You know, there’s some kind of humour in that she’s dragged me out here to recover from an abortion and put me in a shared room with a fifteen-year-old boy,” Emily pointed out, picking the bed furthest from the fire to throw her stuff on. There would be more light on the other bed during the night, she'd decided.

“That’s not funny.” Spencer put his suitcase down carefully on his bed, watching as Emily dumped hers open onto the covers. As always, his eyes missed nothing. “Is that Balthy?”

Emily winced. “Yeah. What about her? I didn’t bring her because I was scared and wanted comfort or anything, that would be a totally lame reason to bring a stuffed animal…”

But Spencer wasn’t fooled at all. “I missed you too,” he said. “Should we go see what the surprise is?”

“I bet it’s lame,” Emily declared.

It wasn’t.

 

Emily stood back awkwardly in the doorway of the sitting room, watching Spencer hug his mom and ramble at her about everything he’d been doing lately at such a speed that Emily only just realised how much she’d missed his enthusiasm. Diana, to her credit, seemed to be keeping up just fine with Spencer’s rushed recitation about his life.

“I told you,” Elizabeth said to Emily, coming up behind her and, after a moment’s hesitation, touching her arm. “We’re all going to reconnect.”

“You said family,” Emily said, testing the waters. “That was your exact words. You wanted to reconnect with your _family_.”

“I did,” said Elizabeth firmly. “And here you all are. You’re not alone, Emily. I’m sorry that I’m not a good enough mother that you believe that. If it’s not too late, I want _us_ to be better—I promised Spencer I would at least try.”

And Emily, after a brief moment of thinking, turned and hugged her tightly.

 

“Mom’s sharing a room with your mom,” Emily announced when she bounced into the room that night, finding Spencer poking marshmallow bits through the guard over the fire. “You know that unscrews, right?”

“We’re not supposed to unscrew—oh you’re already doing it, okay.” Spencer’s mouth twitched as he sat back to watch Emily use a nail file on the screws to get them off, pulling the grate aside and grabbing a handful of marshmallows. “And I know. These suites only have two rooms, where else did you expect them to sleep?”

“Well, their room only has _one_ bed,” Emily said intently, looking at him with both her eyebrows raised as high as she could get them.

Spencer paused. “Nope,” he replied, making as though to put the marshmallows in his ears. “Whatever you’re thinking, I’m not interested. I don’t need to _know.”_

“You’re not even a little bit interested?”

“Not even a little bit. I’ve read their letters, I don’t want the _specifics_. That’s gross. She’s my mom, gross, no.” Spencer laughed despite his revulsion at the look on Emily’s face. Suddenly, she scurried away, grabbing something out of her bag as he watched with interest. “What are you doing?”

“I got you this,” she said quickly, thrusting a paper bag at him. “In France, while Mom and I were waiting for my… thing. Anyway, I saw this and figured you know, long necks like yours… anyway. It’s a sorry that I wasn’t there for your birthday and I didn’t get you anything for Christmas either because of everything, so I know this is shit, really, but—”

It was a scarf, purple and silky and just right. Spencer held it close and said with absolute honesty, “Emily, it’s perfect. Thank you.” He paused, still hugging the scarf tight, and asked, “Did you ever open my gift to you?”

She nodded, biting at her lip. “Yeah. Before I found out… I went into your room and found Balthy and, I don’t know, I guess I realised how hard on you I was being. If it had been the other way around, I would have done the same thing. Spence…”

“It’s dumb, I know, but at the time… I don’t know. I just wanted to stop fighting.” He was flustered and awkward remembering the gift, which seemed so stupidly sentimental looking back. It was the paper Emily had written so long ago, the one on _To Kill A Mockingbird_ , still marked with ‘accepted for newsletter’ along the top. He’d had it framed with a small note added into the frame on the bottom: “You’re smarter than you believe and I’m sorry I made you feel otherwise” in Spencer’s handwriting.

“Where did you even find it?” Emily asked instead of admitting that she’d hung it next to her bed. “I forgot that thing existed.”

“Oh, your mom kept all your school stuff,” Spencer said like it was the most normal thing ever, stunning her. “They’re in one of the filing cabinets in her office. Hey, do you know what else I found?” He was grinning now, the kind of grin she was only used to _giving,_ not receiving, and she didn’t trust it one bit. “A report on your favourite person ever. Want to hear it? I _memorised_ it.”

“Oh no,” she said.

“Oh _yes_ ,” said he, before happily beginning to recite it verbatim: “Spencer is my best friend and the smartest person ever in the world, probably even smarter than the man who invented the world. He wears clothes that are Odd but I really like and he is my favourite person because he always knows things I don’t—Emily, _stop it!”_ The recitation interrupted by Emily walloping him with a pillow, Spencer fleeing and her giving chase around the room. Despite the danger, he leapt the bed with an ease he’d never be able to emulate if he wasn’t being cheeky and yelled the rest of the report at her between helpless laughter: “—and because he’s a good adventurer and always listens really well. If I could be anyone else I wish I could be him because he smiles all the time and laughs at things and also he’s really good with Hares _ow!_ No fair, you can’t go for my legs—ah! _”_

The dark outside pressed against the windows, the snow flurrying busily, but, within that room, they were safe from everything without, finding one last vestige of childhood in the wake of a very terrible year.

From then on, things were better.


	26. Fiver’s Turn to Fall in Love

For the next five months, every time Emily felt like she was drowning under the weight of everything she was trying to achieve, all she had to do was look beside her bed to the essay she had framed there. Spencer believed in her; he’d _always_ believe in her. She had every reason to excel, and every opportunity. Without John offering her a promising lure of a different kind of life, excelling was far easier. And, to Elizabeth’s irritation and Spencer’s delight, as it turned out Emily was truer to herself than she’d believed at the time; despite leaving John behind, her hair remained just as wild, her makeup as stark, her clothing as violent as ever. Emily was Emily as she’d always been, but she was an Emily who was going to get where she wanted to go.

As the exam period came closer, Emily listened in on conversations between Spencer and her mother, realising that they had been in contact with a long list of colleges with Elizabeth acting as Spencer’s advocate for early entry. She realised that there was no more stalling: Spencer would be leaving this year, whether she was ready or otherwise. With Elizabeth’s Rome posting about to end, that meant she could end up anywhere—but almost certainly not close enough to MIT or Harvard that Emily would be able to visit, unless she was right there beside him.

She worked harder than ever, locking herself away in her room for weeks on end until even Spencer told her maybe she needed to study less. But she was determined, and Emily had never really been one to give up or slow down when she was determined.

Two weeks before her exams, Spencer and Elizabeth flew back to the States to attend a whirlwind series of interviews with colleges to ascertain which would be the best fit for him, both financially and academically. Elizabeth had quietly discussed funding his college education: he’d been adamant that he could gain a full ride if given a chance to show them what he had. Emily wasn’t the only one determined to excel, and to do so without help. But time flew so fast that before Emily knew it, exams were here.

Before she knew it, they were over. She put her pen down and breathed.

“How’d you go?” Matthew asked anxiously as she came out of the gymnasium, the air fresher than it had been in years, the sun brighter, the world more _alive_.

Emily beamed. “Aced it,” she declared. “Absolutely aced it.”

She was right.

 

Spencer hadn’t had a graduation party and neither would Emily. Instead, the night after Emily, capped and gowned, graduated high school at the age of fifteen, they had a party of their own.

“There’s something a little concerning about the fact that you’re celebrating graduation with stolen alcohol,” Spencer said to her, more than a little drunk by this point and red-faced from being whirled around by Fiona as she’d pulled him into a dance that had been as giddy and young as they were. It was just the four of them in the wine-cellar-turned-rec-room of Fiona’s house, her parents away, and Emily laughed and leaned over to turn the music up. He shouted to be heard over it as Fiona and Matthew danced together: “I’m just saying, it’s not a stellar sign of what’s to come.”

“Oh, shh, you,” Emily scolded, leaping up and taking the bottle of beer away from him before wrapping her arms around his hips and trying to get him to swing the damn things. “Like Mom will notice. We all know the staff sneak beer all the time, whoever does inventory is used to covering it up.”

“Your knowledge of the alcohol inventory is _also_ concerning,” Spencer added. Despite his misgivings, he seemed content to celebrate alongside them, his hands coming to hers and shifting them on his body so that they ended up doing a slow waltz around the room to a fast-paced dance beat. Emily didn’t mind, she just leaned her head on his shoulder and relaxed for what felt like the first time in forever, the last year of horror culminating in this moment: she’d done it. A year later than Spencer, sure, but _two_ years earlier than her friends. She’d graduated _and_ proved that she could learn just as fast as he did. Her college applications were in, right alongside his, and she could keep on proving that she was every bit as worthy of pride as her genius best friend was.

 

They were seated in Elizabeth’s office again, the envelopes in front of her even more terrifying than those of Emily’s results. Emily stared at the two neat stacks, just barely avoiding chewing her fingernails with the utter anxiety of the moment.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, her eyes watching every movement either of them made. Spencer looked just as sick as Emily did. “Do I open them, or shall you both?”

“We will,” they both chimed in unison, lunging for the envelopes stamped with every respective college they’d applied to. Silence followed, broken only by the sound of frantically tearing paper.

“I got in,” Spencer said first, collapsing back into his chair with a gasp of relief.

“To where?” Elizabeth asked.

Spencer looked at the papers all over his lap. “To _all_ of them,” he replied, astounded. “They _all_ accepted me.”

“Of _course_ they did,” Emily said. “Wait, which ones are we both in?”

“Emily,” Elizabeth warned. “That’s not really how I would want you to both choose your—”

But Spencer was already studying the letters, reading them faster than any of them could. “Yale,” he announced. “We’re both accepted into Yale.”

Emily frowned a little, wondering how she’d gotten into _Yale_ , but deciding not to question her good fortune. And there was silence as they both looked at Elizabeth, waiting for her response.

“Well, that’s an excellent school…”

“Still want us to pick something else, Mother?” Emily smirked as she said this, earning a glare before Elizabeth looked to Spencer.

“But Spencer, wouldn’t the program at MIT be far more appropriate for your interests? I don’t want you to regret your choice.”

“Yale offered me a scholarship to study my undergraduate with post-graduate options, and they want to speak to me about concurrent study,” Spencer said quietly, passing the letter over to Elizabeth. “That’s more than MIT offered. And out of the schools Emily got into, Yale is the _best._ Our wishes aside, these are good choices on multiple levels.”

Elizabeth read it before looking at them for a long time as they waited for her final verdict. “Well then,” she said, smiling with a smile that was slight but they both knew was practically a whoop of delight. “I guess we’re moving to New Haven.”

“Yes!” Emily yelled, leaping out of her chair, before stopping mid-cheer. “Wait, ‘we’?”

 

For Emily, leaving Rome was a heartbreak she hadn’t really felt before. All the friends she’d left behind in the past, all the homes she’d said goodbye to—this one was the worst. There was hugging Fiona at the airport and trying not to bawl her eyes out even as Fiona sobbed, and then there was seeing Matthew crying too and just giving in to the inevitable. Spencer lingered awkwardly, his carry-on tucked at his side and his glasses strange on his face now they were used to seeing him in contacts. Fiona hugged him once, kissing the corner of his mouth, and he seemed sad enough as he hugged her back… but Emily knew he wasn’t hurting as bad as she was.

“Don’t forget me,” Matthew told Emily as the boarding call came. “I don’t think I’m _ever_ going to know someone like you, Em…”

“No one is forgetting anyone,” Fiona promised them both, taking their hands in hers in a final, miserable triangle of farewells. No John, Emily thought fleetingly, but that felt better than the alternative. “We’re always going to be special to each other, right?”

“Right,” Emily said, holding them close before letting go. And then it was time to board, leaving Italy and her life there behind… she curled into her seat and tucked her knees up, the seatbelt digging into her stomach and her eyes burning as she pressed her kneecaps into them. Alone, again. Friendless, again… starting again, _again._

But a hand touched her thigh, and she uncurled to look at the boy beside her.

“I’m still here,” he said quietly, his eyes intent behind the thick glasses. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

That meant more than he’d ever know, even if she resented him a little for being untouched by this. But that, she thought with a sigh, was just how Spencer was… he never seemed sad to leave behind their Sometimes Homes, because the only home he cared about was with his mom. She doubted he’d ever hurt like this hurt; he just didn’t make friends that way.

She was very, very wrong.

 

When they got home, two people were waiting for them. They were the unlikeliest pair standing together, but there they were, Diana and Ethan. Spencer, upon seeing them both waving at him, wasn’t sure who he wanted to hug first. Emily had no such qualms, hurtling over to Diana with her old enthusiasm and only checking her speed a little before crashing into the slim woman.

“Good to see you’re back to normal, demon child,” Diana said fondly, hugging Emily in return. Ethan was left with Spencer, turning what was a shy hug into a full lift into the air, spinning his friend around just to hear him squeal.

And Elizabeth approached behind with a quiet smile that was just for Diana, hidden in the joy of their reunions.

 

Things had changed at home while they were in Rome, which they both guessed should have been kind of obvious since things rarely stayed the same anywhere. It was most evident at Ethan’s home, where he and his sister had formed their own garage band which had, apparently, gone through a memorable number of iterations in the years since they’d formed it—currently known as _Our Frisky Whiskers_ , which Spencer refused to ask for more detail on. The month they had in Seattle before beginning the move to New Haven felt like an eternity, most of which would now be spent in said garage, as Fi tried to teach Emily guitar and Ethan showed off for Spencer’s amusement.

“Come on, Fi,” Ethan wheedled, winking at Spencer. “Come jam with me. Show them what we can _really_ do.”

“Stop calling me Fi,” Fi answered as she sauntered over to him and smacked his arm gently. She’d changed too, Spencer noted; still with the tie-dyed headband and the funky clothes, she’d now dyed that hair black and pulled it into a spiky kind of ponytail, her makeup red and purple and sharp. It was an intense look, and very stark when she stood next to her brother in his beaten denim and ruffled blue polo. “You know I go by Phil now.”

“Phil?” Spencer asked curiously.

“Philomeee-nah,” Ethan sang cheekily, earning another punch. “Oh Philomeeenah, you’ve never let me down!”

Spencer hid his smile only just in time as Fi—Phil—hurtled after her brother with her sandal out ready to smack him with it, Ethan dodging it as easily as if he’d been doing this since the day they were born, continuing to sing a song that Spencer was pretty sure he was making up on the spot.

“Siblings are weird,” Emily said, sitting next to Spencer and watching the two siblings fight. “I don’t think I’ve ever chased you with a shoe.”

“That’s how you can tell we’re not siblings,” Spencer said sagely. “No casual physical abuse. Do you think Phil resents that Ethan got _Ethan_ as a name and she landed ‘Philomena?’” His notebook in his lap, he was absently writing down thoughts as he watched the twins stop hitting each other and return to their instruments, now bickering about what song they’d play for their friends. It was a learned habit now, to write down his thoughts as they came for later perusal, and he barely noticed when his brain switched from words to images as he watched them up on their makeshift stage, something striking in the sight. Maybe it was the way they teased each other so easily, as Spencer wondered what it would be like to never be that alone… or maybe it was Phil’s ease in her own skin, or Ethan’s laid-back smile.

Something up there was captivating, his heart thumping faster as they actually began to play a song he recognised vaguely from their stay in London and again from Emily playing it loudly sometimes. It had never interested him before, but it did now in some illogical way, as Emily laughed and sang along with Ethan belting out the lyrics with an enthusiasm the original singers hadn’t even seemed to put into it. With just Ethan’s keyboard and Phil’s drums, it was less than the original, but _more…_ and Spencer blinked himself back into his mind and looked down at his notebook to find a idly sketched outline of Phil with her skirt tied up around her waist and her drum-set before her, Ethan consisting solely of the suggestion of shapes and lines, like Spencer hadn’t been able to capture him fully.

Emily’s laugh snapped him back to himself as Ethan and Phil began to fight again. Spencer looked at her, feeling pole-axed and like his attention was suddenly locked on the makeshift stage. She was staring at his notebook, a cheeky kind of grin set onto her features.

“Nice detail on _Phil_ ,” she teased, tapping her finger on the careful features of Phil’s face captured there. “Paying a lot of attention to her, are you?”

“Uh,” said Spencer, who didn’t know what his body was doing right now, his brain chaotic and every discordant note sending his nerves rattling. He wanted to turn and look but also couldn’t, finding that his face was burning like he’d been caught doing something secretive and private, something he should only have been doing when tucked away in his room at night.

“Oh, you _are,”_ Emily whispered, eyes going big. “Guess you’re into the older girls, huh, Spence? She’s practically _nineteen._ That’s so old!”

“Uh,” said Spencer again. Why was he so warm?

“Well,” said Emily finally, settling back in her seat and watching past Spencer with her expression terrifyingly scheming. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that… don’t worry, Spence. I’ve got you, buddy.”

And Spencer whispered, “Oh no,” because he wasn’t entirely sure Emily _understood._

How could she, when he barely understood himself?

 

They were to get their licenses before leaving for college, which for Spencer was a terrifying concept. He was paralysed by the idea of being behind the wheel of a car, violently against learning to drive in the same car as Emily, and not sold on the idea of a stranger teaching him either. Since his mom hadn’t had a license to drive for years now, somehow that had culminated in this moment: Ethan teaching him how not to bunny-hop Ethan and Phil’s shared beat-up old manual up a dirt road near his house.

“You’re not so bad,” Ethan said generously, holding himself in place with one hand on the dash as the car jolted its way up the drive, Spencer almost having an anxiety attack in the driver’s seat. “Just… yeah. Like that. Ease on the clutch a bit. There you go, you got it, remarkable.”

“Remarkable?” Spencer repeated. “That I learned it at all?”

“No, just you in general,” Ethan shot back with a lazy smile that tingled all the way to Spencer’s toes. He focused fiercely on the road and not on his friend, who was now playing with the broken radio trying to get it to play something that wasn’t classical music. “Want me to drive for a bit? We can lap the lake.”

“Please.” Spencer relinquished his seat happily, sinking into the passenger’s seat with a sigh and belting himself in before reaching for Ethan’s bag of candy. They drove in a comfortable silence for a while, all the windows down and the summer afternoon deepening around them. By the time they’d begun a heated debate on the merits of Bach, it was almost evening and Ethan had pulled them up on the bank of the river, watching summer insects flitting across the water. “Emily used to tell stories about witches over there,” Spencer remembered suddenly, watching across the lake to where the pines stood proudly. “We ran away, trying to get there once…”

“See,” Ethan replied, shaking his head with a delighted expression on his face. “ _Remarkable._ You ran away to hunt down some witches. How are you so logical and so fantastical all at the same time? If I was to write a song about you, it would be an enigma. Clashing chords and startling lyrics, Fi going ham at the drums.” He began to hum to himself, fingers dancing on the steering wheel and head tipped back a bit to watch a dragonfly nose curiously at the car.

“Would you?” Spencer asked curiously. When Ethan looked at him for clarification, he continued: “Would you actually write a song about me? That would be pretty boring, I’d think. I haven’t done much.”

“You lived in _Rome,_ man. You’ve done so much. The letter you wrote me about Carnevale, shit, if I could capture half of that feeling in a song I’d die happy…” Ethan sighed melodramatically. “My folks are all about beautiful things, but they don’t believe in music… go to college, get learned, get a real job, they keep saying… just don’t get too many fancy radical ideas, huh?”

“I guess.” Spencer was starting to think maybe Ethan and Emily should rant about the system together—Emily hadn’t left her dissatisfaction in Rome with John and her broken heart.

“What’s life but endless, recursive regrets…” Ethan said quietly, looking glum. “I’m off to college to study a degree I’m not even sure I want, that’ll probably land me in a government gig wearing a suit and tie. Where’s the time for music? How am I supposed to stop and take the time to write a song about a remarkable boy before that boy gets taken away and made to grow up?”

Spencer stared at him, something clicking into place. It was a ridiculous realisation, fast and strange and impossible to ignore, like with the word ‘remarkable’ his world had finished the shift that had began a week before, a shift two feet to the right and now centred entirely upon another boy’s smile. A feeling like driving too fast down an unsealed dirt road, the danger of the wheels skidding out at any moment… but feeling more alive for it despite that.

Suddenly, he understood Emily and how she’d acted in Rome because he was pretty sure there were few things he wouldn’t do to have someone call him remarkable like _that_ again. And the math was all wrong, the chances of _this_ boy at _this_ time, with their age differences and their life differences and their wildly contrasting worldviews, but maybe, just maybe, this illogical math could somehow turn out perfectly logical after all.

“So,” Ethan was still saying, his hand on the gearstick and fingers idly tracing circles around the end, like he needed something to do with his hands to distract from the sudden silence. “Uh. You and Phil, huh?”

“Huh?” Spencer rasped out, his throat dry and hands clammy.

“Emily said to me, something ‘bout you liking Phil. Which is weird, because she looks like a monkey to me… her ears are too big and she yells a lot, but you know, you do you.” Ethan looked intensely uncomfortable. “I don’t know, I guess Emily wanted me to put in a good word for you or something, but Phil’s not really like that. That’d probably put her and her monkey ears off you for good.”

“I think she looks beautiful,” Spencer said in reflex, Ethan’s mouth doing a strange thing. “I mean, she looks a lot like you.”

That earned a laugh. “You think I’m beautiful? Maybe don’t tell Phil that.” And Ethan shot him a look that was the same look he’d given him the first time they’d met, so sure that they were going to be amazing together, whatever happened. “So, you do like her then?”

And Spencer was brave at that moment, braver than he’d ever been. He reached out his hand, curled it over Ethan’s hand on the gearstick and, as Ethan’s eyes widened curiously, he simply said, “No.”

“Oh,” said Ethan. Then, “Oh!” There was a painful beat of quiet as they both stared at each other, speechless, until he finally broke it with a soft, “Remarkable,” and a hopeful smile.

“Remarkable,” Spencer agreed as Ethan turned his hand up and threaded their fingers together. With that subtle gesture came a feeling that Spencer had never really had before, but had had explained at length to him before by both Emily and Fiona: that he’d very much like to kiss the boy before him. That, he realised, was just as thrilling a feeling as he’d been promised it would be.


	27. Irrational Rationality

Emily was sure that her scheme would come to fruition the day of the Coiros' summer party. Both her and Spencer were invited, of course, and she was determined to use it as a chance to show Spencer what being in love was really about. It was finally his turn to be happy with someone, she was _determined._ She just had to figure out how to get Philomena on board with the idea…

And she was still puzzling that out late that afternoon, several hours into the aforementioned party. She’d abandoned Spencer and Ethan to do their own dorky thing wherever they were after hearing Ethan excitedly waxing poetic about his new hammock, and had instead spent the afternoon hanging out with Phil and her friends in the lake. It was a strange experience for Emily, one that almost put her match-making thoughts out of her head as she sat in the shallows and alternated between watching Phil and her friends cannonball from the pontoon and turning back to watch Phil’s parents flirting with each other by the gas barbeque. It was all so… homey. Strange. Like midday TV, families that didn’t really exist, except this one _did._

“Hey, Em, come with me,” Phil called, waving Emily over as she began to swim towards a small boat shed further up the bank. Emily followed at a sedate swim, mostly enjoying the water until she reached her and followed into the shed, finding Phil tugging loose a bag of grass from a toolbox. “You smoke?”

“Sometimes,” Emily admitted, sitting on the edge of the shed with her feet in the water and wringing her hair out. “What about your other friends?”

“Nah, they’re not keen. Want some?”

“Sure.” Emily watched her like a hawk as she made the bowl up before coming to sit next to Emily, her legs so much shapelier in the water when she dangled them beside Emily’s. Emily stared at them glumly, at the small tattoo of a hummingbird on the other girl’s ankle, and guessed she could see what Spencer was so interested in. Phil was pretty and tanned and slim and confident, and Emily was just a pale, scrawny… kid. “Did that hurt?” She pointed to the tattoo, intrigued by it and wondering what kind of art she’d have on her body if given the opportunity—what kind of statement she’d like to make.

“Sort of. It did on the nubby bit, there. But it was pretty good, not like this one.” She yanked up her shirt, Emily blinking at the realisation she wasn’t wearing a bikini top under there before focusing on the tattoo it revealed, a cascade of flowers and clocks down her back. “Like?”

“Whoa,” Emily breathed, drinking in every perfect detail. “That’s rad. I bet _that_ hurt.”

“Hoo yeah, baby. Went numb after a while though.” She tugged her shirt down and smiled proudly. “So worth it, in the end. I love it. And if I get old and boring, I’ll still have it to remind me of being me _now.”_ They fell quiet as they smoked, feet in the water and thoughts kept to themselves until Emily risked speaking again.

“So, Spence,” she began brightly. “He’s great, isn’t he?”

“Specs? Yeah, he’s real sweet. What a wild kid. You know, Ethan’s never really had a friend like him.” Phil snorted ungracefully, something else Emily envied—she wasn’t scared of how she seemed to others. “Ethan’s never really had a friend. That kid is the most extroverted introvert I’ve ever met.”

“He doesn’t seem very introverted,” Emily said, thinking of Ethan’s brash exuberance. “Aren’t introverts shy?”

“He _is_ shy. He just hides it super well. You ever noticed how he talks so much but never really says anything important? That’s a kind of shyness, never letting anyone close. Spencer’s gotta be a one of a kind to break through that, he really does.”

Phil seemed to be fond of him, so Emily took her chance and ran with it.

“He really is a one of a kind,” she hinted carefully. “He thinks you’re pretty special too.”

But Phil laughed, a startled bark of a sound that almost startled Emily off the edge. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “Whatever you’re implying, gal, you’ve got it so wrong. Spencer’s not sweet on _me.”_

“Yes, he is,” Emily pushed, determined to see this through. Spencer would have his happy ending by the end of the day—she was _sure._ “Have you seen how he looks at you? He doesn’t even look at _me_ like that, and I’m his best friend ever. He’s got starry eyes.”

But Phil just stood, gesturing for Emily to follow her and padding barefoot out of the door of the shed. Curious, Emily followed her down a narrow dirt path that was overgrown and disused, around the house to the quiet side where trees pressed close and the sound of the lake lapping felt distant. Emily could still hear occasional laughter from the lake and smell the meat cooking on the grill, but they were the only signs that they hadn’t just vanished from the yard entirely.

Pressing a finger to her lips, Phil crouched by a tree and pointed, her mouth turned up in a sharp smile. Emily inched closer, peering past. And what she saw there took a moment to understand, her heart giving a startled thump of shock when it clicked.

“I told you,” Phil whispered. “It’s not _me_ he’s sweet on.”

Emily just stared, at the lazy trickle of smoke from the joint in Ethan’s mouth, his eyes half-open and looking more relaxed than Emily had ever seen him. Stared at Spencer as well, who was curled into the slowly swinging hammock alongside Ethan like he fit perfectly in the small gap left there, a book open over his hip, his hand loose on Ethan’s chest, and his head lolling on the other boy’s shoulder. Fast asleep, or very close to it, in the shaded, quiet clearing that she could tell had been used as a pitch for various games throughout their lives.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. Even as she watched, Ethan tilted his head back, wrapped one arm closer around Spencer, and closed his eyes with an unfamiliar kind of smile on his mouth. Emily recognised that smile as the same she’d worn when she’d kissed John for the first time, utterly content and happy to be loved.

“Don’t think much of Spencer’s taste,” Phil teased, but Emily didn’t have the heart to tease back.

 

Every time she looked at them after that, she could see it. Like a looming storm of heartbreak, it was in every one of Spencer’s dreamy smiles, his increased furtiveness over the notebook he was never without, his secretiveness about his plans for the rest of their holiday. Emily felt like she was watching a car crash about to happen, a cloying anxiety that kept building and building like it was filling her up inexorably, telling her that this could only end terribly. She didn’t even know why it was scaring her so much—she’d been totally cool with Spencer dating Phil, right?

Right?

She didn’t know anymore. Maybe she’d only been okay with it because she’d _known_ Phil wasn’t interested. And maybe she was more than a little upset that she’d missed that her best friend was, what, gay? Interested in Ethans, anyway. Tall, gawky, _male_ Ethans with deep singing voice and brooding eyes and stupid, sexy hair and—

Emily shook herself out of her funk, smiling tightly at her mother over the breakfast table. Elizabeth seemed alarmed by this smile, despite Diana distracting her almost immediately with some query on the morning paper.

And Spencer just kept idly stirring his cereal, half a smile hidden on the corner of his mouth and his eyes a stupid kind of happy. Emily scowled at him, biting into her toast fiercely and wishing every Ethan in the world would go away and not… not hurt him.

There it was. There was her fear. Every time she walked in on them, making sure to barge into Spencer’s room when they were in there without knocking, or linger if they were watching TV together in the sitting room or just wandering around outside, she found herself looking not just for signs of _them_ , but also for signs of John. Some hint that Ethan was whispering in Spencer’s ear, sneaking into his mind just like John had hers and convincing him that his only worth was whatever he had that Ethan wanted. Convincing him that his family were just holding him back.

Driving him away from her.

But she never caught them being intimate. No matter how often she burst into Spencer’s room, she never found them having sex or kissing or even really touching each other at all. Usually just Spencer with a book and Ethan with his keyboard, both inviting her to come and look at whatever they were doing at the time. They never held each other’s hands or smiled at each other like a promise or called each other pet names, and Emily began to wonder if she’d hallucinated the whole thing—were they even _together?_ Or had she assumed? But she knew she couldn’t ask Spencer; after all, when John had been hurting her, he’d been doing it in a way that made _sure_ she wouldn’t ask for help. Why would Spencer be any different?

She began to poke, convincing herself that it was okay because she was trying to save her friend from himself, or at least from manipulative boyfriends. And she was poking in the only way she knew how to get answers: by being astoundingly blunt.

“Do you think my virginity can grow back if I don’t get laid soon?” she declared, bursting into Spencer’s room and watching with satisfaction as he choked on the milkshake he was sipping from. Ethan just looked confused. “Is that a thing that can happen? Ethan, you look like a hound dog, is that a thing that can happen?”

“A… hound dog?” Ethan repeated blankly, patting the still-sputtering Spencer on the back, milk dripping from Spencer’s nose, somehow. Emily assumed inhaling had happened.

“Yeah, you know. I bet you have loads of sex. You’re in a _band_.”

“ _Emily_ ,” Spencer wheezed through his milky lungs.

“I’m in a band with my sister,” Ethan pointed out. “Who exactly am I supposed to be having all this sex with?”

“Groupies,” Emily answered. “Fans, you know. Girls at bars.”

“He’s _eighteen,”_ Spencer managed, finally inhaling air properly. Emily winced at how red his eyes looked from his coughing fit. “He can’t get in bars. And you have to tour to have groupies.”

“Sure, but by eighteen, I bet he’s had loads of sex.” Emily stared intently at Ethan, who was starting to look very cornered. “So he’d know all the ins and outs, and it’s his duty as our older, more responsible friend—”

“Debateable,” Spencer muttered.

“—to make sure we’re fully educated in the pitfalls of sexual intercourse, right, Ethan?” She beamed at him. “What’s wrong?”

Ethan just swallowed, his face very, very pale. A twinge of something started up in Emily’s belly, a clawing kind of ‘oops’ like she was doing something wrong here. But it was just _sex,_ and if he was going to be fucking her friend—she paused, frowning as her brain tripped over just how two boys would have sex. How did that... work?

Ethan, ignoring Spencer’s quiet, “You don’t need to answer,” finally found his voice.

“I’m, uh.” He swallowed again. “I haven’t… This is an incredibly uncomfortable topic, don’t you have other friends you can ask? Ask _Phil_ , she knows stuff. God knows I know that she knows stuff, her bedroom is next to mine.”

“Oh,” said Emily, shocked and distracted from her musing. “You’re a virgin? But you’re _eighteen?”_

There was the most awkward kind of silence she’d ever had with Spencer as they all looked everywhere but at each other before Spencer spoke.

“Not everyone is you, Em,” he said with a gentle kind of reproach in his tone that she felt shamed by nevertheless. “There’s nothing wrong with not wanting sex. _Nothing.”_

And the way he said it, stressing the _nothing_ as he glanced quickly at Ethan, simply confirmed what Emily was already numbly suspecting: she might have just hit a sore spot.

“You’re right,” she declared, determined not to put her foot in her mouth again. “Sorry, Ethan. I’ll ask Phil.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, still looking unhappy.

She was more careful after that.

 

Meanwhile, Spencer was on his own journey of discovery, albeit far quieter than Emily’s fierce self-introspection. What had started out as a gentle kind of captivation had changed so suddenly into something so all-encompassing that Spencer was having trouble thinking back and remembering what it was like not having Ethan being the centre of his focus. It was disconcerting too, because with this kind of attraction came a fierce terror of rejection, despite Ethan having never shown any inclination of doing so. Emily’s odd behaviour recently aside, they were continuing on as they always had, except for a few subtle differences.

One was when they were alone. Ethan had gently declined Spencer’s request to kiss him that day in the car, stammering uncertainly about it being too fast until Spencer had thought to sink into the seat and down through the earth was a better option than sitting there simmering with shame. But, after that, Ethan changed just a little when no one else was around. If Spencer was lying somewhere, just like that illuminating day in the hammock when Ethan had been a little stoned and very relaxed, Ethan would curl up next to him in a way that wasn’t at all like lying with Emily. Sometimes, he’d reach and hold Spencer’s hand, just like in the car that day, jerking away fast if they heard someone coming. And, most fascinating, while Ethan was almost always humming or singing to himself, when they were alone, his song changed. It was a different kind of song, one Spencer soon realised was theirs alone, only ever hummed when they were shyly orbiting each other in some quiet approximation of something he’d never felt before.

Another was Ethan himself. Sometimes, only rarely, when he talked now, it was about _himself._ And it wasn’t until he began to open up to Spencer that Spencer realised it was the first time. After Emily had flustered them all with her questions about sex, when Spencer had walked Ethan home that night—Emily leaving them alone for once—Ethan tried to explain himself.

“I’ve never been interested,” he said, stammering painfully over every word and looking like he wanted to slink away and forget this conversation was even happening, his feet dragging on the path. “I don’t know why, everyone else at school was always talking about hooking up or their plans to hook up and I was just like, nah.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Spencer said with a shrug. “I don’t care. I’m not that interested either.” That was a little bit of a lie. He was happy enough without it, but that didn’t mean his body wasn’t aware that sex was a concept that it was biologically predisposed to want. And ever since the first day he’d really _noticed_ Ethan, his dreams had been decidedly more focused.

“I _know_ , but there’s not interested, and then there’s _not_ interested. I can’t…” Ethan stopped, hauling in a terrified kind of breath. “Spencer, what are we doing? What is this?”

“We’re not doing anything you don’t want to,” Spencer said firmly. He tried to hum the refrain to the song Ethan had made for them, earning a worried smile.

“You have no tune,” Ethan told him, shaking his head.

“And you have nothing to worry about. We’re whatever you want us to be, and nothing more.”

Spencer would never know how grateful Ethan was for that.

 

Four days after that, Ethan was reminding him how to play the piano. They were alone in the front room of the Big House, Emily distantly audible blasting her music for the entire house to enjoy. Side by side on the cushioned seat, Spencer focused completely on matching his hands to Ethan’s, trying to mimic the fluidity of his friend’s fingers—and failing.

“It’s all math,” he complained. "I don't understand why it's so hard. I learned it when I was younger, I don't know why I've _forgotten_."

“It’s music,” Ethan replied. “Stop _thinking._ Just feel.”

“Feel what?” But, when Spencer turned to direct this question, he found Ethan already looking at him, mouth set in a soft smile, eyes wide with some kind of fear—and, before Spencer could ask him what was wrong, he leaned forward and kissed him.

It wasn’t anything like Fiona. Spencer barely remembered Fiona's kisses; Ethan's, he knew, he'd absolutely never, ever forget.

“Oh!” came a startled noise from behind them. Spencer leapt up, feeling Ethan jolt with shock as they both turned, expecting Emily for some reason. She always did have some kind of radar for when Spencer was kissing someone, after all.

But it wasn’t Emily.

“Mom,” breathed Spencer, Ethan going still next to him. “Uh…”

“I was going to ask if you would both like lunch,” Diana commented, her eyebrows raised and her expression amused. “But it appears your mouths are already busy.”

Ethan dropped his head to the keys of the piano, a loud cavalcade of notes following the move. “I want to die,” Spencer distantly heard him mumbling. “This is the most embarrassing.”

“Lunch would be great, Mom,” Spencer managed through his own discomfiture.

“Well, it’s being served now,” Diana pressed gently. “In the dining room.”

“With Elizabeth?” Spencer whispered, hoping that his mom _wouldn’t_ tell Emily’s. It seemed a futile hope. Moms loved gossiping about their children, he’d long figured out, even _his_ mom.

“With Elizabeth,” Diana confirmed.

“ _Most embarrassing,”_ Ethan groaned.

 

“So, Ethan is it?” Elizabeth began, affixing him with the most intent stare Spencer had seen on her in a while. In fact, the last time he’d seen her look at someone like that, it had been an incarcerated terrorist she was questioning about his experiences.

Oh no, thought Spencer.

Oh _boy_ , thought Emily.

Ethan just froze. “Yes, ma’am,” he choked out, green eyes darting from his plate to Spencer in a panic. “That’s my name.”

Elizabeth frowned. Emily gave Ethan a wide-eyed look that screamed _oh god, don’t sass her_ even as her mouth opened in a horrified kind of smile, a choked laugh barely held back. Spencer stared at his mom, begging with his eyes to stop this from happening.

Diana nudged Elizabeth gently.

“You’re an accomplished musician?” Diana asked with a smile that was a lot kinder than Elizabeth’s stare, despite her tired eyes. “I heard you playing the piano before. It was quite lovely. I’m not sure we’ve heard such music in this place since Emily decided to stop attending her own piano lessons.”

“Like she was ever any good anyway,” Spencer muttered, followed by, “Ow!” as he was kicked by a wayward foot of no certain origin.

“I’m… yes,” Ethan stammered. “Music, yup. I like music.” There was silence as he grabbed his spoon and attempted to stab a slice of ham with it. “Oh, shi—fuck. Um.” In a panic, he grabbed his water and drank from that, everyone watching with a kind of second-hand embarrassment spreading around the table.

Everyone but Elizabeth, who simply called for his glass to be refilled when he was done before turning that stare on him again.

“And what are your plans for your future?” Elizabeth asked, leaning forward a little. Spencer groaned. “Immediate and long-term. Do you aspire beyond music, as fun as I’m sure that is as a hobby? College? Networking?”

“Uh,” said Ethan.

“Mom, he’s eating lunch,” Emily spoke up. “Not applying for a job. Leave him alone, don't interrogate him.”

“I’m not interrogating him,” Elizabeth snapped back at her. “I just want to know what kind of a life Ethan is considering for himself. It’s important at his age—you’re eighteen, yes? That’s an age where you should be looking forward, not back. It’s certainly not fifteen.” 

Spencer’s fork clattered against his plate as he suddenly tuned in, gaze snapping up to lock onto Elizabeth and looking just as fiercely focused as she did. “Wait, is that what this is about?” he asked. “Because there’s an age difference between me and Ethan? I’m sixteen in two months and he only turned eighteen three months ago—it’s not even that wide.”

“That’s not my point,” Elizabeth said firmly, frowning at him now. “You’re a focused and accomplished boy, Spencer. I’m merely trying to ascertain whether Ethan is also.”

“And I’m only allowed to fall in love with accomplished people, am I?” Spencer demanded.

Silence followed. Diana folded her hands into her lap, watching Elizabeth with no expression on her face. Emily was grinning, very much enjoying that someone was biting back for once.

Ethan was staring at Spencer. “Love?” he repeated quietly, no one except Emily hearing that startled word.

Elizabeth reached for her own glass, as though to try and dispel the growing storm. “I hardly have a say in who you fall in love with,” she commented mildly. “Although I would point out that you are still only a child and I hardly think—”

“I mean, you do hardly think about our hearts,” Spencer said with dangerous calm. “Because as far as I remember, you never cared this much about Emily’s when John was messing with her. Maybe if you had, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Hey!” Emily objected, her smile vanishing.

Spencer ignored her kicking his leg, continuing on doggedly: “So if you didn’t care about Emily when she was in danger of being hurt, why do you care so much now? Why are you treating _me_ like I don’t know what I’m doing when, looking at the track record of kids you’re responsible for, _I’m_ doing fine. Ethan and I aren’t having sex, I’m _not_ a child, we’re technically in the same stage of life since I’m out of school—and even if we _were_ having sex, legally there’s nothing wrong with it in this state—but we’re not, and we won’t, and I’m not Emily!”

He finished with a thump of his chair hitting the ground as he stood, chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath.

“Spencer, sit _down_ ,” Elizabeth snapped.

“No,” Spencer said, stepping back and picking his chair up and tucking it back in neatly. “I’m angry and don’t wish to sit down to a meal with the objects of my anger. That goes for you too, Emily—I know you’ve been worrying about me and that’s why you’re hanging around us so much, and I’m touched that you care—but maybe you should have just _asked_ me before assuming I’m being manipulated. Not everyone is an emotionally abusive son of a bitch like John Cooley.”

And he left.

“I’m very happy to see that Spencer has learned from the best on how to make an exit,” Diana commented, Emily wincing a little at the barb. “He was never this melodramatic before he met you.”

Ethan coughed nervously, slipping his own chair out as he stood and bobbed his chin at Elizabeth. “Thank you for lunch, I’m sure it would have been delicious,” he said, backing up before following Spencer at a hurried walk.

Elizabeth just sighed, picking at her napkin in a manner far more suited to her daughter than her. “Children are difficult.”

“Not if you don’t treat them like job candidates, honestly, Liz, what did you _expect?”_ Diana scolded gently. “Emily, come on. Let’s go find our boy.”

 

“John’s not as bad as you think he is,” was the first thing Emily said to Spencer when they found him sitting down by the lake, Ethan lying on the pier nearby with his fingers dangling in the water. “He’s just an immature asshole. I’m sure he’ll grow out of it, just like I’ll probably grow out of being a stubborn bitch.”

“Is that really what you followed me down here to say?” Spencer asked, looking at them.

“No. I also wanted to say sorry for assuming. And that was really cool, you yelling at Mom. People don’t yell at her enough.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Diana, sitting next to Spencer and brushing an ant from his trousers as Emily sat on the other side of him. “Now, will you call your lovely friend over here? I wish to meet this man who has stolen my son’s heart.”

“Are you going to ask about his aspirations?” Spencer asked warily.

“Actually, I was hoping to ask him which genre of music speaks to him the most beautifully. He seems like a boy who would love… jazz. Am I correct?” Diana smiled as she said this, bumping her shoulder against Spencer’s, who laughed.

And Emily watched them quietly, wondering what college was going to do to this soft, beautiful moment and all the moments like it, as distance pulled them away from the things they loved once more.


	28. What the Devil Doesn’t Know

If Spencer cried the day they left the Sometimes Houses for what felt like truly the final time, they all pretended that they didn’t notice. Emily sat alone in the car, heart aching from the goodbyes they’d already had—Diana, back to Vegas, and the staff that Emily had grown up with as the news of Elizabeth renting the property out had spread. The only one who remained was Garett, the gardener, who was a fixture of the property as permanent as the buildings themselves. He promised them he’d look after their hares and ensure that the rock under which Balthy lay would forever remain undisturbed. That was another goodbye—a final goodbye to their wonderful, brave hare, and Emily wasn’t so old that she didn’t have a cry at that too. All their belongings vanished into two mover’s trucks, ready to meet them in Connecticut, and she felt like she’d been cut adrift from the one place she’d always assumed she’d be able to return to.

Spencer and Ethan spent one final hour together, sitting on the pier where, so long ago, Spencer had broken his leg. A final kiss was shared, morose and heartbroken with every touch. Theirs was a private moment; we won’t intrude further upon it.

And even Elizabeth felt the gravity of this day, doing one last walk through the empty halls of the house where she’d first brought her hellion of a daughter home, remembering with a wistful fondness the howls that had floated through these rooms when Emily had first found her voice. Half of the furnishings remained for whichever tenants chose to move in, whatever they decided to do with them. The rest would arrive within the week at the home she’d bought in New Haven and intended to live within for the next two years until both her children turned eighteen and she could trust them in the college dorms, upon which she’d return to overseas assignments. It had been an easy choice to make: at this final moment, when she could have so easily cast the care of the children who depended upon her aside—the college had offered them rooms on campus, despite their age—she’d remembered every moment of the past six years and decided that, just this once, she refused to fail them.

And then it was over and the great doors were closing behind them for the final time. Goodbye, Michael, she thought with satisfaction despite her sadness—because these halls were also relentlessly a reminder of her estranged husband.

And that was something she wasn’t at all sorry to be closing the door on.

 

Before Spencer climbed into the backseat, having lost the race to shotgun front, Ethan caught his arm. Out of earshot from the others, pressing close and trying not to let his voice waver painfully, he said: “New York isn’t so far from Connecticut, you know. We can visit each other.”

“Of course we can,” Spencer promised desperately, his own voice cracking. “Of course we _will.”_

Ethan nodded firmly, steeling himself for an offer that terrified him to his core to make: “So, you know,” he mumbled, redder than Spencer had ever seen him before, “if you want to be boyfriends, I’m okay with that. Long-distance, I guess, but… if you want…”

“I’d love that,” Spencer replied, gripping the tape that Ethan had gifted him and wondering if this is what heartbreak felt like, even though this was a _happy_ moment.

And that was that.

 

“Want to borrow my Walkman?” Emily asked Spencer on the plane, offering it to him after seeing the tape he was staring glumly down at. “It’s still six hours until we land.”

“Please,” Spencer rasped, accepting the offered gift and passing Emily’s tape back to her once Ethan’s was in place. “Want to listen too?” It felt only right, after all, since it was hers.

“Alright, so long as it’s not all flowery and gross.” She pressed close, the headphones hooked around them both as they leaned together and watched the sky flash by, on their way to what felt like the biggest adventure they’d had together yet. But really, they’d faced Rome and London and ghosts and John… so what was college? And with Ethan’s music cheering them on, they readied themselves to face what was coming—entirely unaware that Elizabeth was watching them, remembering another flight, so long ago, and how different her companions were now to back then. She realised about then that what she’d been waiting for had happened: they’d grown up while she wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t as happy a realisation as she’d have expected it to be, almost sorry that their dolls were packed away and no stuffed toys sat between them.

 

The house in New Haven was unlike any that Emily had ever lived in, as she stopped and stared at the building waiting. Spencer, who hadn’t lived in a home like this since Las Vegas, stopped too. For him, it was entirely familiar—completely normal. A symmetrical, colonial style house with white walls and a blue trim and a _garden._ Not grounds, but a _garden._ A short drive led to a small garage, him and Emily exchanging a glance.

“Mom, it’s so…” Emily began, staring at the fenced in yard with her heart hammering. That was a yard. A fenced in yard. The kind of yard you could have a _dog._

“Normal,” breathed Spencer, beginning to grin. “It’s normal!”

“You’re welcome,” Elizabeth said dryly, tossing the house keys to Emily. “Go on. Go pick your rooms.”

They stared again for a moment, as though waiting for a staff member to pop out of the mail-slot and inform them he’d be showing them to their room. But no one appeared and Emily shrieked with pent-up excitement, hurtling from the rental car as she raced for the door, Spencer only a few steps behind her. Elizabeth ambled behind, amused at the sound of galloping overhead as they argued loudly about which room they wanted more before Spencer appeared by the bannister.

“Can I sleep in the attic?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” said Elizabeth, Spencer looking crushed.

But before he could vanish back into the depths of the hall, Emily’s voice shouted back, “Dibs on the master bedroom!”

“No!” yelled Elizabeth, ignoring Emily’s loud, “Damn!”

Despite these hiccups, bedrooms were quickly picked and their new lives began, with three camp mattresses bought from a nearby camping outlet and a stack of ordered pizzas. For Elizabeth, it was a strange feeling, sleeping on the floor of an empty living room with Emily and Spencer arguing over Star Trek beside her, but for the kids it was something new and promising: normality.

 

College was a shock to them both. They shared some classes, but not all, and the first time either of them stepped into a lecture hall alone to find themselves most definitely the youngest person there by far was a shock. But they both dealt with it easily, in their own individual ways. Emily bounced her way immediately over to another stunned looking student, sliding into the seat beside her and introducing herself as, “The tiniest friend you’ll make here, if you want me.” The girl, after laughing, agreed—and Emily made a mental note not to introduce her to Spencer and prove herself a liar. Spencer, on the other hand, had sat right at the front of the hall in his own lecture and crept up to shyly introduce himself to the lecturer at the end of class, an introduction that turned into an excited debate on several parts of the coursework that then led to Spencer almost being late to his next class—where he did the exact same thing. By the end of the day, Emily had made several friends and Spencer was already known among the faculty as someone to look out for.

College, for them, was proving to be far easier than expected, despite their ages.

 

And 1986 flew on. Their shared heartbreaks faded, helped along by Spencer calling Ethan every chance he had and Emily sending such a flurry of letters to Rome that Elizabeth commented on how hard she must be working the Italian Postal Service. The coursework proved to be a breeze for Spencer, who was already discussing with his coordinator about whether he’d like to take another degree on top of the two he was studying if he thought himself capable. Emily struggled a little more, drowning for the first month and a half before she admitted to Spencer that she was struggling and he helped her—with the assistance of several whiteboards and a detailed day planner—plan out her studies. After that, and with the added benefit of her college friends being hardly interested in partying with a fifteen-year-old, Emily did just fine.

Their sixteenth birthdays arrived with an amazing gift: tickets from Elizabeth for three to a concert of their choice. After some discussion with Spencer, Emily managed to come out on top of where they were going—and it was decided that November would take them to the New Haven Coliseum part of the Theatre of Pain tour. Spencer, warily listening to Emily’s Mötley Crüe albums after, wondered just what exactly he’d gotten him and Ethan into.

But first there was Halloween: Elizabeth gave them permission to decorate the house to their heart’s content, although she disallowed them from trick or treating. Despite this, Spencer was happy just being allowed to decorate, spending hours rigging up a complicated series of lights and sounds in the garden that Emily kept triggering and frightening herself with. And, on the night of Halloween, Spencer wasn’t at all surprised when Emily slipped into his room with an armful of sheets and a wicked grin.

“Sneak out with me?” she asked, nodding her head to the tree near his window. It was a small leap of faith from his window to the branch, and he’d initially taken the room assuming that at least this would stop Emily breaking her arm on it. But… for trick or treating…

He was tempted.

“I have a better idea,” he said, spinning out of his desk chair and standing up. “Hide the sheets—I’ll be back.”

And with his most innocent smile, he bounded downstairs to ask Elizabeth if they could borrow the car, citing his fantastic grades as a reason why they should be allowed to go to the showing of _Aliens_ at the drive-in tonight. Elizabeth, after some thought and by finally coming to the conclusion that Spencer was mature enough to be trusted, agreed.

“But there and back,” she warned them.

“Of course,” they lied happily, vanishing into the night with their sheets and their smiles and their plans for the night looming ahead. And they did go to _Aliens_ —as unhappy as that made Emily, as she vividly relived her terror of body-horror—but that was only eventually, once they were done being _them_.

And it was a Halloween worth waiting until sixteen to enjoy.

 

Emily fell in love one last time that year before it came to a close. And it wasn’t with a boy this time, or even with anything capable of breaking her heart. The night of the concert came and saw the three of them right there in the middle of it, Emily sliding to a stop as she stared at a group of revellers in their leather and studs and teased, dark hair. One in particular caught her eye, a woman in leather pants to die for, heavy boots giving her a decidedly deadly air.

“Like what you see?” the woman yelled at Emily over the crash and thump of the glam metal.

“So much,” Emily admitted enviously.

And the woman just laughed, taking off her choker and tossing it to Emily. “Enjoy, little punk chick,” she yelled, vanishing into the ground and leaving Emily standing there almost bouncing with excitement. She eventually found her way back to where Spencer was standing looking stunned by the screaming going on around them, Ethan enjoying himself greatly leaping around with the beat.

“Is that a collar?” Spencer asked, doing a double-take and staring at the choker around Emily’s neck. “Where did you get _that?”_

“On the way home,” Emily answered dreamily, hardly hearing him over the glorious cacophony of noise around them, “we need to find me some leather pants.”

“Oh no,” said Spencer.

“Shit _yes,”_ Ethan cheered, grabbing Spencer’s arm and hauling him into the crowd in search of adventure.


	29. Time Flies When You’re Being Punk

Nineteen-eighty-seven was a year that was notable for having nothing notable occur. At least, nothing that was notable to anybody but the two people who were living through it. To Spencer and Emily, nineteen-eighty-seven was a very notable year indeed.

 

In March, Emily was sprinting through the house in a panic searching for her hairbrush, her date waiting outside with his car idling impatiently. Spencer, who had a private bet going on with Ethan about how long this particular ‘boyfriend’ was going to last, was disconcerted when she slammed into their bathroom without knocking to find him peering hopefully into the mirror with his shirt off.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked, staring at him. He was covering his chest self-consciously, hunching down into himself like he did a lot these days. Hiding himself, she assumed, despite the fact that Spencer hadn’t hidden himself for years—she really hadn’t quite thought through the reason for his bad posture quite yet.

“Seeing if I needed to shave,” Spencer said glumly, knowing she was going to tease him for this. “Apparently not…”

“Aww, give it a few more years,” she teased, right on cue, sauntering over and patting his arm. “Shaving sucks anyway.”

“I _know,_ but Ethan says my voice has broken and I was hoping—” Spencer stopped, a little thrown by the way Emily was staring at him. “What?”

“Your voice _has_ broken,” she said, astounded. “When did that happen? It’s all… different.”

Spencer, feeling a little bit like a bug being examined, straightened and backed away from her to let her at the bathroom counter. “I don’t know,” he said awkwardly, seeing her focus sharpen. “What _now?_ You should _knock,_ what if I didn’t have pants on? Stop staring at me!”

“You’re _taller,”_ Emily gasped, scandalised. “Get here, quick.” And, without waiting for him to agree, she grabbed his arm and yanked him over, standing back to back with him and staring into the mirror with an expression as though her world had ended. “You’re taller than me!”

“Oh no,” said Spencer, staring into the mirror at the good inch and a half between him and Emily’s heights. “You noticed… I’ve been trying to hide—”

“I’m never speaking to you again,” Emily declared dramatically, grabbing her brush and stalking from the bathroom, feeling more betrayed than ever before. Spencer, well used to her melodrama, just sighed and continued searching for wayward facial hair.

Still, three hours later when Emily returned home with her heart broken once more, Spencer was there waiting with a bowl of popcorn and his most sincere condolences despite his prior betrayal—secretly gleeful that he’d won ten bucks from Ethan because of the hasty culmination of this relationship.

 

In May, they graduated their first year of college, both of them doing—at their own respective levels—fantastically. Emily celebrated their freedom by hauling Spencer along to a dance class for some unknown reason, but which Spencer was almost certain was because she fancied someone in it. And, expectedly, three weeks in, the boy Emily was eyeing finally took notice of her notice of him and Spencer was left learning to dance on his own.

“You could drop out if you hate it so much,” Ethan told him on the phone when Spencer told him about the escapades. “She won’t stop you now that Trevor—”

“Anthony,” Spencer corrected him.

“Do I really need to learn his name? He’ll last two weeks, tops.”

Spencer thought about that for a moment. “Dance class continues for another seven weeks,” he said. “I bet he’ll last until the week after when he realises Emily really only fakes passion for dance for two hours once a week. Twenty bucks I’m right.”

Ethan chuckled. “You’re on. You going to drop out?” Secretly, he hoped Spencer’s answer was going to be no—there was nothing he’d love more than to get to dance with his boyfriend, at some point in the future.

“Nah,” said Spencer, unwittingly making Ethan’s week. “It’s kind of helping with the… legs.” He stared glumly at his limbs, which had recently decided to grow so suddenly that he wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with them anymore, tripping over everything including his own knees and constantly punching himself in the face instead of putting on his glasses. “Maybe I won’t be as clumsy if I learn to balance.”

“Or maybe you’ll just break another limb,” Ethan teased.

Sadly, he was right, and two weeks later when Spencer tripped and broke his wrist mid-routine, it was decided that perhaps dance class wasn’t quite for him. Just to compound his misery, Emily had heard his yelp and raced to his side, upsetting Anthony, who had a jealous streak he’d kept nicely hidden until now.

Spencer, with his broken wrist and twenty bucks poorer, felt he’d rather come off the worse for it all.

 

A month later, Emily started dating Tom, who turned out to be a shy, quiet boy who was the exact opposite of anyone Spencer had ever seen Emily be interested in. He was sure he wouldn’t last, and stunned when he _did_ , right up until September when it was discovered that he was also being shy and quiet with several other girls on the side.

Emily swore off all boys forever after that, curled in a ball on Spencer’s rug with Ethan and Spencer peering down at her. “I’ll just die alone with a ton of cats,” she declared woefully.

“Have you ever considered not dating assholes?” Ethan suggested, flicking a piece of popcorn at her shoulder and only getting a sad sigh in return. “Jeez, Spence, I think she’s actually heartbroken this time. She didn’t even throw the popcorn back.”

“I deserve popcorn flicked at me,” came Emily’s muffled voice, her face now pressed into the rug. “I’m a punk-rock nightmare. His mother _hated_ me.”

“It was probably the fishnets,” Spencer suggested wisely.

“Or the new earrings,” Ethan added, nodding to Emily’s new skull and cross-bone set. “Or maybe the hair.”

“Definitely the hair,” Spencer said.

Emily just whimpered.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Spencer continued cheerfully, grabbing Ethan’s hand before he could flick more popcorn. “You be you, Em, don’t be someone else. You don’t need to change for these jerks or their mothers. Besides, Tom would have probably cheated on you even if you weren’t a punk rock nightmare—”

In retrospect, he probably deserved having to take care of her after that, as she started bawling fiercely, eyeliner everywhere.

“Buddy, it’s lucky you’re dating me because you’re _terrible_ with women,” Ethan told him after.

“Shut up,” Spencer said glumly but, honestly, Ethan wasn’t _wrong._

They turned seventeen what felt like only minutes after turning sixteen, taking the weekend away from college to go see Ethan in New York. Emily tagged along because Spencer wanted her there, grumbling that she felt like a third wheel for all of five minutes before she remembered how easily they’d always been three before and how growing up hadn’t really changed that.

They rented a room in a barely not-shitty hotel despite being able to afford much better, Emily claiming the double bed and leaving Spencer and Ethan to squish together into the single, both of them complaining loudly about the unfairness of the world. But there were things to do and New York to see, and the hotel was quickly abandoned in favour of finding a shady movie theatre and watching back-to-back horror movie marathons, culminating in the newly released _Evil Dead_ sequel. By the time they were done, it was late, straggling home in a tired line and still managing to have a heart-stoppingly terrifying moment where they lost Emily on the street for a good ten minutes before she turned up with a grin and some bootleg vodka.

“What are you planning to do with that?” Spencer asked her, which was a question she didn’t feel deserved an answer.

“You’re the ones who’ll be catching a train home hungover,” Ethan warned them. Of course, they didn’t listen.

 

One bottle of vodka later, Emily vanished to fight the outside vending machine, leaving Ethan teaching Spencer how to smoke weed without choking. Spencer, who’d been reluctant to partake, wasn’t entirely sure he was sold on this experience, declaring that it wasn’t _working_ as he wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant scent.

“We’re not going to get our deposit back if it smells like weed in here,” he pointed out, handing the joint back to Ethan.

“We’ll air it out,” Ethan reassured him. “Come here, you.” Up onto Emily’s bed they tumbled, Spencer blinking as the world did a strange waver around him. “I miss you.”

“Miss you too,” Spencer said, finding himself flopped on top of Ethan, snuggling close and enjoying the warmth of his broader partner under him. “This is nice.”

“Says you not getting crushed.” Despite his complaint, Ethan didn’t let Spencer roll off of him, wrapping his arms tight around him and kissing his nose when he tried. Spencer let himself be kissed, shifting to Ethan’s mouth as the world tipped again and left him dizzy, Ethan’s lips against his dry and smoke-flavoured. “We should fall asleep here, really piss Emily off.”

“Mm, okay,” Spencer agreed into his mouth, grinning as he imagined Emily’s annoyance. Closing his eyes, he tucked his head against Ethan’s chest, feeling warm and content and probably a little stoned, drifting off almost as soon as he’d decided to sleep…

And waking to Emily’s cold hands touching him as she burrowed in beside them.

“Fuck off, we’re naked,” Ethan grumbled, one eye open watching her.

“No you’re not,” Emily responded pertly, kneeing him until he inched over to make room. “And it’s freezing out there, so let me in. I dibsed this bed, you’re lucky I don’t short-sheet you to it.”

“Just let her,” Spencer suggested, already falling back asleep.

“Fine…”

And that was how they slept.

 

Emily wandered off before they woke up that morning, hangover free and excited to track down breakfast. When Spencer and Ethan woke, it was to the room to themselves, which they decided to take full advantage of by being as sappy as they wanted to without Emily there to whine at them about it, since the train would take them away from each other once again later that night. This mostly consisted of them making out, a pastime which Spencer was becoming increasingly enamoured by. There was something about kissing the boy he’d loved for over a year now that was intoxicatingly brilliant, still finding new ways to make Ethan smile at him or hum their quiet tune in a contented kind of tone.

Kissing turned into a half-hearted wrestling match. “You know this makes me victor of the bed,” Ethan declared, pinning Spencer down with his arms behind his head and Ethan threatening to nip at his nose if he wiggled. “Emily surrendered it and now I’ve defeated you. This means I am _King.”_

“King of a budget hotel, well done,” Spencer teased, going limp so Ethan relaxed his grip before putting into play one of the long-ago throws that Rossi had taught him, Ethan vanishing over the side of the bed with a startled yell. Spencer gave chase, tackling him and attempting to tickle him into submission, finding that Ethan was a lot _more_ than Rossi or Emily had ever been. As soon as Spencer thought he had one limb pinned down, another was smacking him in the head, and before long he was a helpless, giggling mess unable to defend himself from being pinned again by the now panting Ethan. “I surrender! Uncle! Uncle— _do not!”_

His snarl of horror was because Ethan had attempted to stick his tongue into Spencer’s ear, the most astoundingly horrific thing that Spencer had ever faced or would face in his life. Cackling mercilessly, Ethan waggled said tongue at him, Spencer yanking his knee up in warning of what he’d attack if he heard a single _suggestion_ of anything wet entering his ear.

“You have the weirdest boundaries,” Ethan pointed out, settling more firmly onto Spencer’s lap and leaning down to kiss him— _without_ tongue.

“My ear is _not_ a weird boundary,” Spencer argued. “Ask Emily—I bet she doesn’t like things being shoved in her ear either.” Ethan raised an eyebrow as they both considered that, Spencer taking it back quickly: “Actually, don’t ask her… I don’t want to know.”

“Hm,” said Ethan, suddenly stilling. Spencer blinking, seeing a flicker of consternation flash over Ethan’s features before he slid off. “Ah. Sorry…”

“For… oh.” Spencer burned hot, sitting up fast and covering his lap. “Shit, I mean… shit. No, it’s not your fault, I…”

“It’s alright,” Ethan hurried to profess, looking supremely uncomfortable. “Hey, don’t freak out, you don’t control it. And we were kind of all over each other. It’s… fine.”

But it didn’t seem like it was.

“It’s a physical response to arousal,” Spencer pointed out, pulling his knees up and wishing the unwelcome erection would go away before it made things even more awkward. “I can’t help being attracted to you, Eth. That _doesn’t_ mean I’m going to cross your not-weird boundaries.”

“So you do want sex with me?” Ethan shot back fast, his expression intent.

Spencer shifted uncomfortably, knowing he’d never been able to lie to him. “Yes,” he admitted finally, seeing Ethan’s face fall. “I’m seventeen, Eth. Honestly, some days I feel like I could probably be convinced to have sex with a plant if it was shapely enough… it’ll fade. I’m just all hormonal.”

“But you told me you didn’t _want_ sex, when we started this. You said me being how I am wasn’t stopping you since you weren’t interested.”

“I was fifteen! I didn’t know what I’d want, but nothing has _changed.”_ Fear shot hard into Spencer’s heart as Ethan pulled away from his hand, suddenly terrified that this was going to culminate in the end of them and all because of an accidental erection—which was definitely gone now as Spencer’s entire body prepared for heartbreak. “I like _you_ , how we are—I want to stay like that!”

“Okay, but…” Ethan looked away, clearly thinking something over. “Okay, what about this. If you, uh… if you meet someone you want to have sex with—”

“I _won’t—_ ”

“—then, um… that’s okay. If you want. Without us breaking up.”

Spencer stared.

Ethan stammered over himself, now standing and looking like he didn’t know where to put his hands. “I just, fuck, I never want to be your _anchor_ , Spence. You said it yourself—you’re seventeen. You _should_ be exploring yourself, and I love you so much but I _can’t_ help you with that. So, I don’t know, sex doesn’t mean love. If you want to have sex with others, that’s okay, it won’t stop you loving me. Just, I guess, be safe?”

“I don’t know what you’re offering right now,” Spencer managed, his brain knotted hard and refusing any more information. “I don’t want to break up, Eth, I don’t—”

“We’re not breaking up, I promise. We’re just, I don’t know. Opening? A bit? We’re long distance anyway, so it’s not like I have to… see. I don’t want to see. But it’s not going to bother me if you do.”

Whatever else they’d been going to say was stalled by Emily slamming in through the door with armfuls of food, declaring that if they didn’t help her eat the waffles she’d found, she was just going to eat them all herself.

“I’m already halfway through this can of cream,” she pointed out, before seeing their faces and stopping. “Am I interrupting? I feel like I’m interrupting.”

“No, we’re okay,” Spencer said quickly as he decided he was never taking Ethan up on this offer, _ever_ , and seeing Ethan nod. “We’re totally okay, right?”

“Right,” Ethan promised, finally taking his hand. “Now, hand me those waffles and let’s get this waffle-party _on.”_


	30. Blackbird Flies

It was ten years from the day a bossy girl in torn stockings and a dirty dress had walked out into her garden and found a skinny boy with sticky-up hair and a nose as twitchy as the hare—as Emily now knew she had been—he was holding. A lot had happened since then, but one thing had stayed the same.

They were still together.

“I can’t believe Mom is letting us move to the dorms,” Emily said, staring at her suitcase on her bed. Spencer sat beside it, holding Blackavar and brushing his wild feathers down flat absently. “She’s actually letting us go. I never thought she would.”

“We are almost eighteen,” Spencer said, looking up at her. “I know you think the worst of her, but she knows that we’re capable, Em. And we _are_ capable.”

Emily scowled, taking the raven toy from his hands and propping him back up on the shelf where he would be staying after she was gone, pausing as she imagined him gathering dust sadly in her absence. “I can’t believe I’m going to turn eighteen and I’ve never been on a proper date with someone who isn’t an asshole,” she said, more to herself than anyone else, as she sighed over what a disaster her teenage years had been.

“Well, you know. Your taste kind of sucks.” But Spencer smiled as he said it, standing and picking Blackavar up again before tossing him into Emily’s open suitcase. She shook her head at him, still hating how he loomed over her now, his growth spurt still adding more height to him. He was something like five foot eight now, while she seemed to have stalled at just over five foot six—and with a glum feeling he wasn’t quite done yet. “Bring the bird. I’m bringing Balth. We need them to remind us how small and silly we were.”

“Not that silly,” Emily pointed out with a grin. “We knew we’d get here—and we did, didn’t we?”

“We really did,” responded Spencer, leaving her there to ponder how disappointing growing up had turned out to be.

 

It was Ethan’s idea, the week before they were due to move into the dorms to begin their third year at college. Spencer wasn’t sure he’d heard him properly at first, asking him to repeat himself while staring incredulously at the phone like Ethan could see his puzzled expression.

“You know what she’s going to do if she’s being all glum about her shitty boyfriends,” Ethan argued, his voice a little crackly over the line as he seemed to be moving around and inexplicably banging things. “First thing she’s going to do when you plonk her into those dorms is go out and find the _worst_ guy possible, it’s like she’s magnetically attracted to the crap ones.”

“And me taking her on a date is going to help that how?” Spencer argued, winding the cord around his wrist as he talked. “Besides be really weird for us?”

“Show her what kind of guy she _should_ be getting all starry-eyed over,” Ethan said firmly. “She’s probably surrounded by guys like you—”

“Like me how?”

“You know, cute, smart, sweet. The kind of guys who’ll dig her weird punk-rock raven look she’s got going on instead of trying to change her. My theory is if you show her what an actual, not-crap date looks like, that’s what she’s going to want from now on—so it’s what she’ll look for. Genius, right?”

Spencer stared at the wallpaper, trying to logic this out in his head. “Are you suggesting that I try and condition my best friend into dating men like me because…” He paused, squinting over the thorny bits. “Because… guys like me won’t hurt her? There’s a lot of assuming going on here, Ethan. And it’s a little creepy. And weird. And Machiavellian—”

“Oh, pffff. Don’t be such a sap. At worst, what happens? You have a fun night out with your best friend. You do know how to go on a nice date, don’t you?”

Spencer did not. He and Ethan weren’t really the ‘dating’ type and Ethan seemed to understand that from the awkward silence from his end of the line.

“Right, okay. Well, I can’t help you with the details—you know her better than anyone, so you have to figure those out—but I can give you some pointers. And for god’s _sake,_ Spencer, do _not_ forget to kiss her at the end.”

Spencer choked, accidentally pulling the cord tight and almost yanking the phone right out of the wall. “To… what!? Why?”

“It’s the most important part—if you don’t kiss her, then she’s never going to expect the kiss at the end when she actually dates real men—and the kiss is where you fall in _love._ Do you really want to be the reason Emily never falls in love again because you’ve conditioned her to expect to never be kissed? Can you live with yourself if you’re the reason she dies alone and gets eaten by cats?”

Spencer didn’t know where to start, with the ‘real men’ comment or the eaten by cats or the assumption that Emily was like a duckling imprinting on the first mama duck who taught her how to kiss or—

“Fine,” he said snidely. “But I’m telling her everything you tell me, _including_ the eaten by cats bit.”

Ethan paused. “Well, at least she can’t punch me all the way over here in New York,” he said with some level of caution in his voice, like he wasn’t entirely sure of that himself.

And a plan was made.

 

“Wanttogoonadatewithme?” Spencer asked, bursting into the room like he was channelling her. Emily, with cotton-balls between her toes and black nail polish dangerously close to being knocked over by her startled twitch, just stared at him until he turned down her music and asked again. “Want to go on a date with me? Not a real one. Just a… one.”

“Have you been smoking my stash?” she asked him, inching over on the bed so he could come and collapse beside her, looking like he’d run a marathon instead of just walked up the hall into her room. “What are you on about?”

“Ethan says if you don’t learn how proper dates go, you’ll be eaten by cats,” explained Spencer, looking distressed by the very thought of that. “So he says I should take you on a proper date so you know what a proper date is, which I’m not entirely sure I follow the logic of, but at worst we get to hang… out. Right?”

“Huh,” said Emily, continuing to stare at her strange friend, who really hadn’t gotten any less strange since that first day in the garden. “Okay?”

“Great!” Spencer closed his eyes, finally breathing properly. Emily, mildly amused by how relaxed he looked now, reached out with the polish and brushed it gently against the nail of his thumb. “Oh no, Emily…”

“Shhh,” she soothed him, going for the next finger. “Don’t you want to look pretty for our date? Stop laughing, you’ll smear it.”

Really, neither of them had gotten any less ridiculous.

 

Apparently, Ethan’s advice for the beginning of the date had been for Spencer to ‘wow’ her right off the bat, and she was pretty sure he’d done that already. She’d been dressed by the time he’d told her to be ready, slouched in her nicest not-leather pants—but with her leather jacket on to make up for it—on the couch until he came clattering down.

“Ready?” came his voice from the doorway, and she sat up to tell him she’d been ready for _hours,_ only to pause. It wasn’t that she’d never seen him dressed up before—she had, ever since they were seven—but there was something different about today. Maybe it was that he hadn’t really had a reason to wear his suit and tie since they were gawky teenagers, and these days he wasn’t quite so gawky anymore. Or maybe it was that she was just realising that he wasn’t that gawky anymore, tall and slim and less like he was about to spontaneously trip over himself at any minute. And with his hair combed nice and mouth twitched into a shy smile and pocket-watch at his hip…

“Ready,” she said uncertainly, suddenly feeling a little underdressed as she stood and walked over to him, staring as he conjured a white flower from somewhere on his person, tiny and delicate with soft petals she was almost scared to touch as she took it from him. Trying to turn this into a less weird moment than it was, Emily pulled a face. “A flower? Really? Was that Ethan’s idea too?”

“Yeah,” breathed Spencer, looking worried. “But he said a rose. Which I knew you wouldn’t like, so I found this instead. It’s colloquially known as a skeleton flower. See how thin the petals are? In the rain, it turns translucent… I thought you’d like that.”

“Oh,” said Emily, staring at the flower once more before it took it from her and carefully tucked it into the pocket of her leather jacket. “I really… I do. It’s… is this the ‘wow’ part of the date?” And she tried to laugh it off, like she would any other day with this boy she’d known for ten years and wasn’t at all being surprised by today, not even a little.

“Oh, no. No, that’s coming.”

And he smiled brightly.

 

As it turned out, the wow part of their date was Spencer using his access card to get them into the basement of their college, walking through the dusty aisles of old books and stored curiosities until they reached one aisle in particular.

“Are they _brains?”_ Emily exclaimed, staring at the spooky line of jars waiting down there, glowing dimly in the flickering light. It was astoundingly gross.

“Yup,” said Spencer happily. “Want to hear everything I know about them?”

“Oh my jeez, _yes_ ,” said Emily, never having meant anything more. Wow, indeed.

She had no idea how he was going to top this.

 

He topped it.

“It’s been a while since we went ice skating,” he said, skating smoothly out onto the ice and pausing to hold his hand out for her to catch up. They were at the Yale Whale, the school hockey rink. “I figured it would be nice to go again.”

“It’s so late, are we even supposed to be out here?” she asked, glancing around for security. But they were alone, the lights dim, not even a cleaner to watch them.

“I mean, probably, but if we weren’t, wouldn’t that just add to the fun? It’s like an adventure, breaking the rules.” And he took her hand as he said this, like for once she was the one losing her feet from under her. She wondered what he was thinking.

“Since when have you liked breaking the rules?” she asked him, letting herself be pulled along.

“Well, I don’t know. I guess ever since I met a girl who taught me how much fun it could be being bad.” And he shot her a smile that was every bit as cheeky as her own could be, as she remembered all the times they’d been bad together before.

“Wow,” she murmured quietly, feeling a smile on her face she hadn’t given permission to be there. “I really am a bad influence.”

His laughter was gratifying, as was his warm hand in hers, as they spent the night orbiting each other on the lonely ice.

 

“So, home?” asked Emily as they finished their dinner at a diner that wasn’t swanky at all, with greasy fries and creamy thick-shakes and definitely not somewhere her mother would ever be seen at. Spencer looked absurd here in his suit and tie, eating his fries with a fork, but Emily also knew why he’d picked this place, and she loved him for it. “What more could we possibly do?”

“One more thing,” he promised her, a little bit of sour cream on his lip avoiding the swipe of his tongue. She watched that white and wondered what else he had in store for her.

It was beginning to feel like she wasn’t totally in control of this night after all.

 

Spencer was gratified to find the path up to the Judges Cave abandoned at this time of the night, Emily following quietly with her eyes turned to the stars.

“I was hoping to go a bit further out for this, get away from the light pollution,” Spencer admitted, looking up at the sky too. “But this will do. I have a whole spiel on the rock planned, if you want it.”

And his heart was hammering, because this was the most important part of the night—something Ethan _hadn’t_ told him to do but which he was pretty sure was an important part of dating Emily Prentiss, for the next guy who was inclined to do so. No one had ever really made her feel as special as she was before—not her parents, not the boys she sought out, not even him, really.

It was time that changed.

“Forget the rock, what are you planning?” she asked him curiously, following him up right to the top of the hill and watching him pick nervously at his pocket. “You’ve been skittish since the diner.”

“Well, I was just thinking, you know. If something has to end, it should end beautifully.” Spencer smiled, trying to shove his hair out of his eyes and just leaving it flicked all over the place. Emily sighed, stepping forward onto her tiptoes and reaching up to fiddle it straight again, his breath warm on her cheek. “So, this is my beautiful ending for you.”

And, before she could stop him, he’d stooped down, grabbed her by the hips, and lifted her boldly as she yelped and hung on for dear life.

“What are you doing!?” she yelled, voice echoing across the quiet surrounds, whooping with a giddy whirl of _something_ as she was suddenly way higher than usual. “Spencer!”

“Get on my shoulders!” he laughed, staggering a bit under her awkward weight. She did, almost kneeing him in the head, clinging on for dear life until he seemed to steady himself under her—still laughing, she noted.

“What now, you fucking weirdo?” she asked, still laughing because he was so _odd_. And under her, he was warm and alive and steady and real… she wrapped her arms around him, hands resting at the dip of his throat, and realised she could feel his heart beating through her calves.

“Reach,” he said simply, stopping her own heart.

“Oh,” she said, understanding. And at that moment, something clicked hard. He was keeping a promise. A promise she barely remembered, a promise she'd given up on because people _never_ kept their promises to her, not even the important ones. Except here he was, keeping his.

“I told you,” he said, taking her back to a time so long ago when she’d watched a father lift his daughter and wished someone would hold her like that. “One day, someone was going to lift you to the stars—I’m happy it gets to be me because I’ve always believed you could fly if someone believed in you enough.”

Emily didn’t say anything, just swallowed down something that was frighteningly like tears before trusting him in return: she let go and reached. For that heartbeat of time, there was nothing holding her up but him, the sky and the stars and the moon above.

It felt like flying.

When he lowered her ungracefully to the ground, she staggered a little under the feeling of being on her own two feet again. He caught her, of course, holding her close and studying her in the moonlight.

“Oh no, why are you crying?” he said softly, his voice different out here, deeper and gentler and secretive, somehow, Emily closing her eyes and wishing she could hide the tears. “Em, don’t cry.”

“I’m _happy,_ you idiot,” she said, punching his chest gently before burrowing her face against him. “I’m fucking happy, okay? You have no idea…”

But he did, really, because his entire life he’d been waiting for someone to show him how special he was too. It had taken Ethan to show him that, Ethan and their secret song—and he knew how heady a feeling that could be.

“Ethan said I should kiss you to finish the date,” he said when she seemed to be crying less. She pulled away, looking up at him with bright eyes wide on her pale face, and he touched a finger to her cheek to see if she was still crying. “But only if you want.”

“You told me once you’d only kiss people you wanted to,” she warned him. “If you kiss me because Ethan told you to and not because you _want_ to, I swear I’ll bite.”

All she got in return was a smile. “I want to,” he said firmly. “I told you. We need a beautiful ending.”

And he kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of another instalment! The third part will be up soon, although updates on that may be a little erratic as my living situation has become unexpectedly precarious and real life is taking a lot out of me this past year and a bit. I've sort of blown through almost all my backlog from having written 200k in July alone (full disclosure, I haven't written barely anything new since then--everything I've posted since July was WRITTEN in July), so I have to find a way to claw my writing mojo back. Bear with me in the meantime, I promise it will be worth it when it arrives.

**Author's Note:**

> I love to hear from you guys. Leave a comment or come chat with us on the [Criminal Minds Discord server](https://discord.gg/kPxKjaE) (don't be shy by how quiet we are--we love new people to talk to!). I also run weekly rewatch threads both on the server and over at the /r/[criminalminds on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/), so come along and join in the small community there. Hope to see some new faces!


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